The Rt Rev Martin Wharton, Bishop of Newcastle, said: "The Church sees marriage as central to the stability and health of human society and so to be encouraged and supported. While there does need to be a clear difference between a religious marriage ceremony and a civil one, the House of Bishops doesn't see songs like Angels and readings with some spiritual element as creating a religious service. They wouldn't be part of a usual Sunday service, for example."

The four-part motion, ‘Administer of confirmation by presbyters’ was approved after vigorous debate and six years after it was first proposed.

The Synod also agreed that priests and deacons, under license from the Archbishop, should be allowed to confirm members of their congregations and that senior lay people should be involved in the preparation of candidates.

The move would bring the Anglican Church in line with the Catholic, Lutheran and Greek Orthodox Churches.

Mr Greenwood said he hoped the support from Sydney Diocese might ease the burden on his church in a number of areas including the interchangeability of ministry, insurance and community credibility.

After the Synod debate yesterday, chief mover of the bill Dean of Sydney, Phillip Jensen, agreed that the new law offered the hand of friendship through a networking mechanism.

"It's about providing a warm welcome not structures," he said.

With the Church of England drifting inexorably towards official acceptance of homosexual lifestyles, (as evidenced recently by the House of Bishops' Pastoral Letter regarding civil partnerships), the Church of Nigeria has correctly identified that interrelationships between Anglican churches and between Anglican Provinces ought always to be shaped by the Gospel. This is indeed the theological position of the Articles, the BCP and the Ordinal of 1662.