Anglican leaders have succeeded in avoiding schism for now. Anger among conservative Primates was growing last night as it became clear that the North American wing of the Church had “got away” with its liberalising agenda.

Anglican Primates, meeting in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, stopped short of disciplining the Episcopal Church of the US for ordaining an openly gay bishop. US and Canadian dioceses that have introduced same-sex blessings for gay couples will also escape discipline.

Instead, all 38 provinces are to be asked to unite under a new Anglican Covenant published in draft last night. The Covenant is a four-page document summarising Anglican doctrine and making it clear that provinces that overstep the mark in future will be excluded until they “reestablish their covenant relationship”. And far from being expelled from the meeting, as some conservative archbishops had demanded, the Communion’s first woman Primate, US Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, was elected on to the influential Standing Committee of the Primates’ Meeting.

That puts Bishop Jefferts Schori at the heart of the Anglican Church’s policy-making body and places her in pole position at the right hand of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, the Church’s “focus for unity”.

Although the covenant makes provision for the first time in the 400-year history of Anglicanism for disciplining provinces that step out of line, its wording is so general as to make a problem for which discipline is deemed necessary to be almost impossible to define.

Under the covenant, where provinces breach its doctrine, they will be deemed to “have relinquished for themselves the force and meaning of the covenant’s purpose, and a process of restoration and renewal will be required to reestablish their covenant relationship with other member churches”.

The Primates spent nearly three days debating the covenant, along with the fine detail of the communique from their five-day meeting at Dar es Salaam’s White Sands Hotel. According to the report of the Covenant Design Group, chaired by West Indies Primate Drexel Gomez, a conservative Anglo-Catholic, the covenant was urgently needed in the Church in order to “restore trust”. The document will be debated by provinces and dioceses before being revised at the 2008 Lambeth Conference.

The Reverend Graham Kings, vicar of St Mary’s, Islington, who runs the Fulcrum website for centre-ground evangelicals, said the covenant was “encouraging”. He predicted a welcome for its emphasis on “biblically derived moral values” and for insistence that actions taken by provinces are consistent with “the catholic and apostolic faith, order and tradition”.

The covenant also demands a commitment that “biblical texts are handled faithfully, respectfully, comprehensively and coherently”. And it says that there must be acknowledgement of the “interdependence” of the 38 provinces.