A conservative province in the Anglican church faces “punishment” this week for offering a safe haven to conservatives.

Senior bishops and laity meeting in London are to consider suspending the Anglican church in South America for taking rebel US dioceses under its wing.

The move will bring the Anglican Communion closer to a formal split. Early next month, rebel conservatives are expected to finalise plans for a new Anglican province in the US, to sit as a parallel jurisdiction alongside the existing Episcopal Church.

Unless this new province is recognised as part of the Anglican family by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams and the other 38 primates, it will in effect become a new Anglican church.

In a further indication that the liberals are winning the Anglican wars, The Episcopal Church of the US, which was suspended at a previous meeting, is expected to be welcomed back into the fold after sticking by its pledge not to consecrate any more gay bishops.

The Latin American Province of the Southern Cone headed by English-born bishop, the Most Rev Gregory Venables, has aroused the fury of liberal primates after a fourth US diocese voted to leave The Episcopal Church and realign with it.

Fort Worth voted earlier this month to quit the liberal Episcopal Church. Within the last 12 months, San Joaquin, Pittsburgh and Quincy have all approved a similar change.

Bishop Bob Duncan of Pittsburgh has subsequently been deposed.

The Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church, the Most Rev Katharine Jefferts Schori, last Friday sent out a “letter of inhibition” against Fort Worth’s Bishop Jack Iker which is expected to lead also to his deposition.

Bishop Iker, who opposes women’s ordination, said in response: “Katharine Jefferts Schori has no authority over me or my ministry as a Bishop in the Church of God. She never has, and she never will.”

The Church of England has so far resisted being split by the controversy. At a recent meeting of evangelicals in London, delegates refused to vote for a motion backing a declaration by the Global Anglican Future Conference, the conservative “alternative” to the Lambeth Conference that met in Jerusalem last summer.

The penalty being considered against the Southern Cone, which has 22,000 members in Argentina and surrounding nations, includes the removal of voting rights at the forthcoming meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council, the central governing body of the Anglican Communion, in Jamaica next May.

When the council last met in Nottingham in 2005, the lay and ordained members from Canada and the US were allowed to attend as observers but were barred from voting. This was because a diocese in Canada had authorised a rite for same-sex blessings and The Episcopal Church had gone ahead with the consecration of the openly gay Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams and Bishop Jefferts Schori are among those who will be debating action against the Southern Cone at this week’s meeting of the joint standing committee of the Primates and the Anglican Consultative Council, chaired by the Right Rev John Paterson of New Zealand.

Significantly, the two conservative Archbishops on the committee, the Most Rev Henry Orombi of Uganda and the Most Rev Mouneer Anis of Egypt and the Middle East, have decided not to attend.