A hardline Anglican group launched today could cause a “disastrous” split in the Church of England, an evangelical bishop has warned.

The Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans is opposed to the ordination of gay clergy, blessings for gay marriage or civil partnership, and the consecration of women bishops.

The new fellowship will today publish letters from the Queen, supreme governor of the Church of England, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, acknowledging its launch.

Buckingham Palace said that it did not comment on private correspondence. However, sources told The Times that the letters from the Queen and the Archbishop of Canterbury were standard acknowledgements and should not be interpreted as endorsements of the fellowship.

Its founders claim it is nothing more than an “orthodox” movement intended to bring about reform and renewal from within. They claim it bears comparison with Anglican agencies such as the Church Mission Society.

Archbishops of conservative Anglican provinces from around the world, including the Nigerian primate Dr Peter Akinola, have sent messages of support.

But its formation is regarded with mounting concern by other evangelicals and liberals who represent the mainstream Church of England.

Dr Graham Kings, consecrated last month as Bishop of Sherborne and founder of the moderate evangelical grouping Fulcrum, said the new fellowship represented a structure that would allow its founders to “split” from the Church of England.

Dr Kings said: “I do not see a problem with a voluntary agency.”

But he said there was evidence that the fellowship would have no more than formal links with the Church of England, and he feared that these could easily be broken.

“I think there should be deep, invigorating moral links between the new fellowship and the Church of England,” Dr Kings said.

“There should not be a split, but one of their frontline clergymen has already split from the Church of England. Another one is seeking alternative episcopal oversight, which is not encouraging. It would be disastrous if the new fellowship moves from being a voluntary agency to becoming a Church within a Church, which is what happened in America.”

Significantly, Dr Robert Duncan, Archbishop of the Anglican Church in North America, the newly founded province that is claiming to be the authentic Anglican Church in the US but is awaiting recognition from the Archbishop of Canterbury, will give a keynote address to today’s meeting.

Schism in England is unlikely to occur over gay ordinations or blessings. It is chiefly the prospect of women being consecrated bishops that has led evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics to become unlikely bedfellows.

Proposals to ordain women to the episcopate are due to be debated next by the General Synod, the Church’s governing body, in February.

Anglo-Catholics oppose women bishops on grounds of the apostolic tradition set by Jesus in appointing his male disciples, and evangelicals oppose them on grounds of St Paul’s “headship” argument — St Paul wrote that a woman could never be “head” over a man.

Anglo-Catholics and evangelicals rarely find common ground but their opposition to women is so strong that the two groups have joined forces.

The Bishop of Rochester, Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, who will deliver the final address to more than 1,000 delegates from England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland at the conference, said that he believed the Church of England could split. Dr Nazir-Ali, who steps down in September but is ideally placed to become Archbishop of the fellowship should organisers wish to follow the American path, said the Church must not be “rolled over by culture”. He endorsed the biblical line against homosexuality.

Dr Williams, who has previously argued the theological case for gay relationships, has recently taken a more conservative line in the hope of preserving Church unity.

However, this did not prevent schism in North America, and the same divided fate may well await the Church of England.

Liberals believe the Church is condemning itself to secular contempt and ultimate extinction by failing to champion the “justice” issue of homosexuality, as it did eventually with regard to slavery and discrimination against women.

Conservatives, on the other hand, believe the Church must never capitulate to cultural mores if it is to remain true to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.