But his appearance Tuesday, at a key organizing meeting for traditionalists, was his highest-profile statement of solidarity with them so far.

"He has been a friend of the Anglicans," said the Rev. Peter Frank, spokesman for Archbishop-elect Robert Duncan of Pittsburgh, who will be installed Wednesday as head of the province.

The catalyst for schism was ostensibly the consecration of the openly gay V. Gene Robinson as the Bishop of New Hampshire in 2003. But in fact, schismatic activities organized in tandem with the neoconservative Institute on Religion and Democracy, (and massively financed by theocratic financiers, Howard and Roberta Ahmanson) had been going on for years.

The AP continued:

In his opening address Monday, Duncan said members of the new entity had "come out of bondage" and escaped from a church that "got cut from its moorings."

The new formation of American Anglican churches, has been an increasingly visible part of the Religious Right for years. Rev. Martyn Minns, a prominent American Anglican leader, for example, spoke at the annual Values Voters conference, sponsored by the Family Research Council last year.

The attacks on the liberal mainline denominations, including the President's own United Church of Christ (UCC), have been unrelenting for many years. The UCC as well as the Episcopal, Presbyterian, Methodist churches generally took exception to the excesses of American foreign policy and corporate abuses; and took increasingly progressive stances on equality for women, reproductive rights and even gay and lesbian rights inside and outside the churches, at a time when conservative evangelicalism and the Catholic Church were headed in other directions.

Many of the conservative schismatics previously aligned themselves with rightwing Anglican leaders such as Archbishop Peter Akinola, one of the most notoriously antigay religious leaders in the world.

Rick Warren, who famously supported Prop 8, which banned marriage equality; later claimed that he didn't; but was instantly proven to be a liar, told the antigay, antiabortion, religious right oriented, group of schismatics:  "God has never met a person he didn't love."