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More than 200 Anglican bishops from conservative dioceses around the world are to boycott next month’s Lambeth Conference and attend a rival Global Anglican Future Conference in Jordan this week instead.

Entire provinces, such as Nigeria, Uganda and Rwanda, are attending the alternative gathering, styled Gafcon, instead of Lambeth because of their emphasis on a Bible-based Christianity that rules out many of the liberal developments in the Western Church, such as the increasing acceptance of homosexuality.

Two Church of England bishops, Wallace Benn, of Lewes, and Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, of Rochester, will be carrying the standard for the Church of England, and conservatives from the United States and Australia will also be in Amman.

The history of the Lambeth Conference

Our historical guide traces the origins and issues that dominated the agenda at past Lambeth conferences

From the Times Archive, 1867

The first Lambeth Conference had its issues, but participants hoped future meetings would evoke the same fraternal spirit

• 1920 Conference: Birth Control

• 1958 Conference: Family Planning

• 1978 Conference: Ordination Of Women

Multimedia

• Full coverage of Lambeth Conference 2008

• Articles of faith: Ruth Gledhill's blog

• Video: Archbishop of Canterbury on Lambeth 2008

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Although organisers say their goal is not to set up a rival Anglican structure, in a statement at the weekend the Church of Uganda admitted that the aim of Gafcon was “to prepare for an Anglican future in which the gospel is uncompromised and Christ-centred mission is a top priority”.

The conference, organised by the Anglican Archbishops of Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, the Southern Cone in South America, Sydney and evangelicals from the United States and Britain, will be a gathering of 280 Anglican bishops.

In a statement, the Ugandans, whose province is the second-largest after Nigeria, with ten million members, said: “The Church of Uganda is not going to Lambeth because the purpose of Lambeth is for fellowship and our fellowship has been broken with the American Church.”

The Ugandans accused the Church in the United States of violating the Bible and Christian teaching by consecrating the openly gay Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire. They also criticised the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams. “The Archbishop of Canterbury did not follow the advice given to him by his own appointed commission to not invite to Lambeth those responsible for the confusion and disobedience in the Anglican Communion,” the statement said.

“What they [the Americans] have done is a very serious thing, and what the Archbishop of Canterbury has done in inviting them is grievous and we want them to know that.” However, the Ugandans denied they were engaged in an act of secession: “We are simply not going to the Lambeth Conference. We are still part of the Anglican Communion, and the vast majority of the Anglican Communion opposes what the American Church has done and the Archbishop of Canterbury’s tacit support for it.”

The boycott by Uganda and others will leave just 600 bishops at the Lambeth Conference, most from the white-dominated liberal churches of the West.

The conference will also be addressed for the first time in history by the Chief Rabbi, Dr Jonathan Sacks, one ray of light in a darkening gloom as Anglicanism struggles to find its place within a postmodern society.

The “marriage” service in London involving two gay priests, David Lord and Peter Cowell, represents just one more pressure on a communion already in meltdown over the parallel issues of women’s ordination and homosexuality.

Bishop Robinson is defying exclusion from the Lambeth invitation list and will attend.

Canon Chris Sugden, a leading conservative on the General Synod and one of the organisers of Gafcon, said of the gay “marriage” service: “The timing appears deliberate. It confirms the assessment of those who have called the Gafcon pilgrimage that this inclusive movement would be relentless, both in the USA and in the Church of England.”