A few hours after falling asleep, the Rev. Elizabeth Sausele was up early, chatting with clergy, foreign bishops and national media at a crowded Denver news conference. "I am so filled with joy," she said. The evening before, on June 24, Ms. Sausele and more than 1,000 worshipers had gathered at a nearby church to celebrate the consecration of four new bishops into the Anglican Mission in America.
 
    In less than a year the AMIA has morphed from a loose network of conservative Episcopalians, anguished over permissive trends in the Episcopal Church USA, to a movement claiming 8,000 members.
 
    Though the process varies state by state, in Colorado -- which has the most defections in the nation -- clergy from six congregations submitted formal resignations to their Episcopal Church bishop. In each case, a majority of members in their flocks followed them to start-up parishes in borrowed churches and fellowship halls. In other states, departures have ignited disputes and lawsuits.
 
    As the Episcopal hierarchy decries the defections, AMIA members insist that they are loyal to the true faith of the Anglican Communion, which began five centuries ago in England and now claims 92 million members world-wide. Indeed, they have been embraced by two conservative Anglican provinces overseas, Rwanda and Southeast Asia, whose archbishops performed the Denver consecrations.
 
    Why the uproar in a church known for its stately rituals and oh-so-English decorum? Among a litany of doctrinal concerns, AMIA members object to the Episcopal Church's recent recognition of sexual partnerships outside marriage and to its optional interpretations of Scripture.
 
    By last month the new movement had rung alarms with no less than Rev. George Carey, archbishop of Canterbury and spiritual leader of the Church of England. The archbishop lacks canonical power over the church's independent provinces, but he is the communion's flagship presence. "Let me make no bones about it," he wrote to his fellow archbishops in Southeast Asia and Rwanda: Consecration of AMIA bishops is "at best irregular, and at worst, simply schismatic."
 
    As canon-law experts mull the fine points of jurisdiction, the defectors shrug off the archbishop of Canterbury's warnings. Sheltered by the overseas provinces and based in 17 states -- including South Carolina, where its headquarters are -- the AMIA says that it is eager to spread the traditional Christian creed.
 
    "I'm not an Episcopalian anymore," said Ms. Sausele, who received her divinity degree in 1996. "I was getting exhausted dealing with the institutional church, where we were fighting things like the authority of scripture instead of living out the gospel."
 

    The Rev. Ken Ross, who resigned from his Episcopal clergy position in December, notes that the Episcopal Church recognizes alternative sexualities but hesitates to proclaim the physical resurrection of Jesus. It "is not a great place to live anymore," he says. He now conducts services at a donated church space with virtually all his Denver flock. And the Rev. Gerry Schnackenberg, now pastor of another AMIA church in Denver, says that it was hard to stomach chastisements from the Episcopal hierarchy "for just trying to be faithful to our Lord Jesus Christ, when nothing's been done about Bishop Jack Spong, who's denied every basic tenet of the Christian faith." He is referring to the notorious, and now retired, bishop, of Newark, N.J.
 
    The day of the AMIA consecrations, the Rev. E.M. Womack, a conservative still within the fold, delivered a rousing sermon 10 miles away at Denver's soaring Episcopal cathedral. To a burst of applause, he advised giving God time to sort out doctrinal disputes: "Allow nothing, and no one, to separate us." But AMIA members counter that contradictory doctrines have already destroyed unity.
 
    The AMIA faces challenges, too. It has agreed to reconsider women's ordination, which Episcopalians granted in 1976 but which is not allowed in Southeast Asia, the home of one of the consecrating bishops. Ms. Sausele, one of two women among 75 AMIA clergy, says that she'll accept whatever happens.
 
    "I believe it's a valid Anglican position to both ordain and not ordain women," she says. "But it's not a salvation issue. The bodily resurrection of Jesus is a salvation issue."
 

GOD's word fully qualifies Rev Carey Jer23 Jam4:4

photo by Fiona Hanson   [see GOD's outcasts]