DURHAM, N.H.--About 40 conservative parishioners in the New Hampshire diocese led by the Episcopal Church USA's first openly homosexual bishop left to form the new Anglican Church of the Resurrection, according to Agape Press.

The group is using the facilities of the Durham Evangelical Church.

Richard Ellwood, a spokesman for the Church of the Resurrection, said for many lifelong Episcopalians the controversy over last year's election of an openly gay bishop, Vicki Gene Robinson, was "the straw that broke their religious back."

The gay debate also split the African Anglican church further from the Episcopal Church USA. The Christian Science Monitor reported earlier this year that African Anglicans in Ghana denied funding from their U.S. counterpart, the Episcopal Church, over the ordination of gay clergy.

Several dissenting congregations in the U.S. have also removed themselves from the Episcopal communion and refused church funds.

Ellwood said the New Hampshire group is intent on following the Scripture. "We migrated together, in many cases not knowing one another, with the same feeling that God was calling us to establish an alternative parish that would hold Scripture as dear as God holds it -- and not water it down, like has happened so continually not only in the Episcopal Church but in some many other denominations," Ellwood said.

The new parish does not consider itself part of the New Hampshire diocese. It has joined the national Network of Anglican Communion Dioceses and Parishes.