Delegates yesterday at the 139th annual convention of the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh overwhelmingly passed a constitutional amendment that allows the local diocese to ignore national church laws it believes are contrary to Scripture.

The amendment to Article I, Section 1 states that "local determination shall prevail" in cases where the constitution and canons of the national church "are contrary to the historic Faith and Order of the one holy catholic and apostolic church ... "

About 85 percent of convention participants in the clergy order supported the amendment during a vote at the Embassy Suites hotel in Moon, while 74 percent of the participants in the lay order voted in favor.

About 350 people attended the two-day convention.

"There are a lot of unknowns about how this will hold up in a canonical court," said the Rev. Geoff Chapman, rector at St. Stephen's Church in Sewickley. But, he added, "the diocese is determined to stay inside the national church and the Anglican Communion while at the same time holding faithful to the authority of the Bible."

Joan Gundersen, a scholar of Episcopal Church history and vice president of Progressive Episcopalians of Pittsburgh, argued that the amendment overreaches.

"The measure is poorly drawn," she said. "It exceeds the convention's authority in changing its relationship to the national church."

The 20,000-member Pittsburgh diocese is one of the Episcopal Church's most conservative. Its bishop, the Rt. Rev. Robert W. Duncan Jr., is moderator of the Anglican Communion Network of dioceses and parishes, which adheres to traditional interpretation of the Bible. The network was formed last year in the wake of the national church's consecration of an openly gay bishop and its tacit acceptance of same-sex blessings.

The constitutional amendment is another step in the diocese's growing estrangement from the national church. This year, 53 of the diocese's 68 parishes declined to give any funding to the national church, reducing overall giving by more than 50 percent.

Duncan has said that he has no intention of separating the diocese from the national church. But while reiterating at the convention yesterday in his annual address how "profoundly sad" he was at the current strife within the Episcopal Church, he reminded the delegates that because "certain behaviors" have always been described by Christianity as sin, the Episcopal Church and the Pittsburgh diocese will remain in conflict.

The Episcopal Church is the American arm of the more than 70-million-member worldwide Anglican Communion.

Curiously, the convention today is scheduled to discuss and possibly vote on six proposed resolutions, including one resolving that the diocese "recognizes that it is a constituent and inseparable part of the Episcopal Church" and that it accepts that "it is bound by, and will operate according to the constitution and canons of the Episcopal Church."

That resolution, No. 4, would apparently contradict yesterday's constitutional amendment.

In a pre-convention letter to convention deputies and at three pre-convention diocesan meetings, church leaders suggested that any debate -- much less votes -- on resolutions No. 4-9 would be divisive and therefore should be postponed.

Discussion of the resolutions is scheduled to begin today at 10 a.m.

A second constitutional amendment also was passed in a voice vote yesterday. The amendment allows clergy to vote in diocesan elections whether or not they are actual residents of the diocese.

The convention's keynote speaker was the Most Rev. Henry Orombi, the Archbishop of Uganda, who recently agreed to provide oversight for three parishes that decided to leave the Diocese of Los Angeles.

Orombi criticized the materialism and secularism of Western societies, saying "the darkness has shifted from Africa and come to Europe and America."

He also thanked members of the Pittsburgh diocese for supporting the Uganda Christian University. "I come here with a lot of gratitude in my heart," he said to a standing ovation. "God is enabling you to stay in the Anglican Communion."