Unitarians have been excluded after the Bishop of Chester, the Right Rev Dr Peter Forster, a leading evangelical, received a complaint about the unorthodox beliefs of some Unitarians.

He asked Canon Christopher Burkett, his chaplain and a residentiary canon at the cathedral, to carry out a review.

"Their doctrine is exactly what we believe," said senior warden Carl Kleeman III. "The order of the service is very important to us and also the dignity and reverence of the service."

Members see themselves in line with the Reformed Episcopals' traditional views.

For example, congregants were critical of the 2003 election of openly gay Bishop Gene Robinson to the Diocese of New Hampshire, said The Rev. Skip Burzumato.

The Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center, for example, spearheaded the international campaign for divestment. This group claims to pursue "a spirituality based on justice, peace, nonviolence, liberation and reconciliation." But it is, in fact, an extremist Palestinian organization that pays lip service to a two-state solution while promoting the "right of return" for all Palestinians, which is a euphemism for the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state.

The Feb. 18 declaration by the U.S. church leaders was written as a letter and read during a media conference at the WCC's Assembly in Porto Alegre, Brazil.

In it, the U.S. Conference for the World Council of Churches accused the United States of "raining down terror on the truly vulnerable among our global neighbors."