Bishop Robert Duncan of the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh (Anglican) is leading a group that is expected to release a draft today of a proposed constitution to reunite many theolgically conservative groups that have broken with the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada over the past century.

They hope that their proposed Anglican Church in North America will be recognized by the primates of the worldwide Anglican Communion as a new Anglican province in North America, said Deacon Peter Frank, spokesman for Bishop Dncan.

It would include the four dioceses, including Pittsburgh, that have voted in the past year to split from the Episcopal Church, the U.S. branch of the Anglican communion, Deacon Frank said. A minority Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh has remained with the Episcopal Church and will hold a reorganizing convention this month. Both dioceses use the same name.

Bishop Duncan is moderator of the Common Cause Partnership, a fellowship of nine theologically conservative Anglican groups that is meeting in Wheaton, Ill., to draft the proposed constitution. Common Cause includes about 700 congregations with 100,000 members. Some additional parishes in Common Cause are still part of the Episcopal Church, and are expected to remain so, Deacon Frank said.

"We are taking all of those bodies and forming them into a single structure," he said. "Our status in the Anglican Communion is really an issue for the Anglican provinces to decide."

The Rev. James Simons, president of the Standing Committee that governs the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh that is recognized by the Episcopal Church, said the proposed new body may find that recognition difficult to achieve, even though some primates from the global South have called for such a province.

"My understanding of the process is that, in order to be recognized as a province of the Anglican Communion, you have to have the approval of two-thirds of the [38] Anglican primates. A handful is not sufficient," he said.