The vote increased the likelihood of a schism in the worldwide Anglican communion over the place of homosexuals in the Church.

Traditionalists described the decision by the American church’s three-yearly convention as a clear rebellion against the Anglican hierarchy, which had appealed for a ban on gay bishops after the 2003 consecration of an openly gay bishop in New Hampshire.

Bishop Robert Duncan of Pittsburgh, a leader of the traditionalist Anglican Communion Network, compared the decision to America’s revolt against British colonial rule. “We got a Boston Tea Party,” he told The Times.

“It leaves the Episcopal Church as having walked apart,” Bishop Duncan said. “We all thought we would get a fudge. What we got was a clear rejection. It’s extraordinary. It gives the worldwide communion a clear message that the American Church is going to do its own thing.”

Gay rights activists hailed the vote as a signal that the American Church favoured the inclusion of gays and lesbians at all levels, despite the opposition of other provinces in the Anglican communion.

“It’s an encouraging vote because I think people came to this convention asking for clarity,” the Rev Susan Russell, president of the gay rights church group Integrity, said.

“The convention has been clear we are committed to being an interdependent part of the Anglican communion but we are also committed to including all the baptised in the body of Christ.”

The long-awaited vote came in response to an appeal by the 2004 Windsor Commission, appointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, for the Episcopal Church to place a moratorium on the consecration of any more gay bishops.

Conservatives tried to seek a vote calling for a mandatory moratorium, using the exact words of the Windsor Report. But the motion was declared “out of order” because it would have required a constitutional change to allow the convention to bind its dioceses.

The motion that actually came up for a vote said simply that the convention was “obliged to urge” the Church “to refrain from the nomination, election, consent to, and consecration of bishops whose manner of life presents a challenge to the wider church and will lead to further strains on communion”.

The Rev George Werner, the chairman of the House of Deputies, said the motion was constitutional because “ ‘Urge’ is not mandatory and the implication of this is temporary”.

Nevertheless, liberals and traditionalists combined to defeat the motion, with conservative Fort Worth voting alongside liberal New Hampshire, infuriating many in the middle.

The motion was defeated 71-38 among lay delegations and 67-44 among the clergy in the House of Deputies.

“You can feel underneath the surface of this process that we do not want to give up and we do not want to give in,” said the Rev Canon Kendall Harmon, a leading traditionalist churchman. “It feels very America-first to me.”

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