PLANO, Texas  Conservative insist they are not splitting from Episcopal Church USA, but are simply creating a "church within a church" whose backers will remain Episcopalians.
According to The Associated Press, 100 bishops, priests and lay members representing a dozen dioceses with 235,000 members  a 10th of the nation's Episcopalians  met Jan. 19-20 behind closed doors to establish the nationwide protest organization.
Bishop Robert Duncan of Pittsburgh, a leading critic of the national church's decision to consecrate an openly homosexual bishop, told a news briefing that the denomination "split from its own history this past summer, so who left?"
Delegates at the meeting plan to complete an organizational charter for the budding Network of Anglican Communion Dioceses and Parishes and are trying to produce a new theological statement based upon previous conservative platforms, the news service reported.
Episcopal Church headquarters in New York has issued no formal statement about the meeting.
Conservative parishes do not want to officially leave the church because they likely would surrender their properties to the denomination.
"We've got a $12 million facility and we can't just walk away from it," said the Rev. Donald Armstrong, a delegate from Colorado Springs, Colo.
