In a step toward creating a church within the Episcopal Church, the Diocese of Pittsburgh decided yesterday to seek formation of a boundary-less, theologically conservative province, and it appealed to the Archbishop of Canterbury for immediate alternative oversight and pastoral care.

Yesterday's resolution does not change the diocese's standing within the Episcopal Church. Nor is it likely to have immediate impact on the diocese's 20,000 members.

It does signal, however, that biblically conservative Episcopalians are replacing talk of dissatisfaction with the national church with concrete efforts to create a separate place for themselves within the wider Anglican Communion.

Pittsburgh Bishop Robert W. Duncan Jr. said the diocese's action was in keeping with its intentions of the past several years.

"We're the Diocese of Pittsburgh," he said. "We're the Episcopal Church in this place. What we're saying is there is a part of the Episcopal Church which is committed to being a constituent member of the Anglican Communion."

The Pittsburgh Diocese's resolution, which must be approved at its annual diocesan convention in November, would commit it to withdrawing from Province III, one of nine current Episcopal Church provinces based loosely on geographic proximity of diocese.

It also would seek to form a new province, Province X, "positioned with that part of the Episcopal Church determined to maintain constituent status with the Anglican Communion."

The provinces, instituted in the early 1900s, serve little theological or organizational function. Only once before -- the Diocese of Missouri in 1964 -- has a diocese withdrawn from its province. It rejoined a different province in 1977.

But its decision was based on geography rather than theology. The Pittsburgh Diocese's decision likely will lead to at least nine other dioceses joining it in the new province. Those dioceses are members of the Anglican Communion Network, an organization of about 200,000 biblically orthodox Episcopalians, about 10 percent of the American church's membership. Bishop Duncan is its moderator.

The establishment of the new province would have to be approved at the church's next General Convention, set for 2009.

The American church's 2003 confirmation of an openly gay bishop and some dioceses' acceptance of same-sex blessings have caused a furor within the Anglican Communion. Twenty-two of the communion's 38 autonomous national churches, which serve more than 70 million members, have declared themselves in either "broken" or "impaired" communion with the Episcopal Church.

The Archbishop of Canterbury proposed Monday that a future "covenant" among communion members could include both "constituent" churches and "churches in association." The former would "limit their local freedoms for the sake of a wider witness." The latter would be bound to the communion historically but would have no decision-making capabilities.

The Diocese of Fort Worth also has requested the archbishop's help in providing alternative oversight. No action has been taken.

Conservative Episcopalians have interpreted the archbishop's recent remarks as recognizing that the American church's actions have placed it outside the bounds of the wider communion. Yesterday, the outgoing leader of the Episcopal Church, Presiding Bishop Frank T. Griswold III, said the Pittsburgh Diocese's action was "altogether consistent with their implicit intention of walking apart from the Episcopal Church. "The urgency of their appeal indicates an unwillingness to be a part of the process of formulating a covenant so clearly set forth in the archbishop of Canterbury's reflection."

Joan Gunderson, president of Progressive Episcopalians of Pittsburgh, predicted the diocese's resolution would mean "great pain" for the parishes.

"This is divisive," she said. "Most people want to be able to be with people all across the diocese. They don't want their church to be divided."