Action By Tanzanian Bishops Risks New Gay Priests Row

A group of African bishops has issued a new challenge to the splintering worldwide Anglican communion by saying they will refuse to recognise any church which allows gay people to be priests or deacons, or any bishops who ordain gay people or license them to officiate.

The move, by the House of Bishops in Tanzania, comes just two months before the world's Anglican archbishops are due to meet in Dar es Salaam, and has potentially serious implications for the Church of England, which has many gay priests, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, who nominally heads the Anglican communion and has admitted ordaining at least one priest he knew to be gay in the past.

Some evangelical English bishops may fall under the ban for tolerating gay clergy in their dioceses.

The statement came as English conservative evangelicals put further pressure on Dr Williams after a meeting at Lambeth Palace by issuing their own demands, to decide for themselves who should be ordained as a way of circumventing the authority of bishops of whom they disapprove.

The Tanzanian statement was aimed particularly at the US Episcopal church which elected a gay bishop three years ago and now has a woman primate, Katharine Jefferts-Schori, who has supported church blessings for gay couples. The bishops' statement said: "Henceforth we are not in communion with ... bishops who consecrate such persons to the priesthood and the deaconate or license them to minister; bishops who permit the blessing of same sex unions ... gay priests and deacons [and] priests who bless same sex unions."