The Council of Anglican Provinces of Africa, headed by Archbishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria, a leading conservative evangelical, could lose up to 70 per cent of its funding if it acts on the motion passed at a meeting in Kenya this week.

The motion was accompanied by a demand that the Episcopal Church of the United States repent within three months for the ordination of the openly gay Bishop Gene Robinson. The African bishops called also for the Episcopal Church to be disciplined, a demand unlikely to be met because all Anglican provinces are autonomous.

The protest motion could impoverish further the African church, the fastest-growing wing of the Anglican Communion, representing about half of its 75 million members.

The Episcopal Church alone provides nearly a third of the African council’s annual budget, amounting to $106,000 or £59,000 in 2002.

Archbishop Akinola has already set up a fund to enable his own church in Nigeria to become self-supporting and to free it of Western support. But it could be years before it achieves its goal.

Homosexuality is illegal or taboo in most of Africa. Christian minority groups in African states fear persecution if their church is seen as embracing Western liberal mores.

Archbishop Akinola said: “If we suffer for a while to gain our independence and our freedom and to build ourselves up, I think it will be a good thing for the church in Africa.

“We will not, on the altar of money, mortgage our conscience, mortgage our faith, mortgage our salvation.”

The African bishops were joined at the meeting by bishops from Asia, the Caribbean and Latin America, representing the Anglican Church’s Global South, who were due to issue similar statements.

The council represents 12 national and regional churches in Africa plus the diocese of Egypt. Many of these, as well as other Global South provinces, have already severed ties with the New Hampshire diocese by declaring themselves “out of communion”. But eight provinces have already taken money this year.

Episcopal leaders believe the vote to refuse funds is little more than a symbolic protest. But Archbishop Benjamin Nzimbi of Kenya said the Africans would have to sever links with New York’s Trinity Wall Street, a prominent parish that distributes grants worth millions of dollars.

The African provinces remain in communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, the remaining figure of unity in the Anglican Church.

Whether the Anglican Communion survives the next 12 months, in the wake of Bishop Robinson’s election and the decision by the Anglican Church in Canada to authorise same-sex blessings, will depend on the findings of the Lambeth Commission set up by Dr Williams to examining the question of authority and ecclesiastical jurisprudence in the light of the furore over gays.

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