Plano, Texas ? Conservative Episcopalians opposed to a gay bishop’s consecration and other liberal trends were on track to establish a nationwide protest organization by the close of a two-day meeting today.

Planners insist the budding Network of Anglican Communion Dioceses and Parishes is not a schism or denominational split but a “church within a church” whose backers will remain Episcopalians.

The immediate cause of dissent was the Episcopal Church’s decision last summer to elevate Bishop V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire, who has lived for years with a gay partner.

But the meeting’s chairman, Bishop Robert Duncan of Pittsburgh, told a news briefing that the denomination “split from its own history this past summer, so who left?”

The closed-door meeting involved 100 bishops, priests and lay members representing a dozen dioceses with 235,000 members, or about one-tenth of the nation’s Episcopalians.

The delegates at the meeting plan to complete an organizational charter for the network. They also are trying to produce a new theological statement based upon previous conservative platforms.

The Episcopal Church is the U.S. branch of the international Anglican Communion and the network hopes to draw legitimacy from overseas Anglican branches that agree with it.

“You’ve never had this many dioceses rallying to say a massive corporate mistake has been made,” said Canon Kendall Harmon, a South Carolina delegate.

Canon Bill Atwood of the Texas-based Ekklesia Society, which aids churches in developing nations, said in a phone interview from Uganda that plans were under way for a formal declaration recognizing the new network from leaders representing a majority of the world’s Anglicans.

Episcopal Church headquarters in New York has issued no formal statement about the meeting.