PITTSBURGH — Representatives from the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh voted overwhelmingly Friday to approve constitutional amendments that are the first step in leaving the national church, which the diocese contends has wrongly abandoned Scriptural authority.

Those differences have deepened since the church consecrated openly gay New Hampshire Bishop V. Gene Robinson in 2003. Pittsburgh joined dioceses in San Joaquin, Calif. and Quincy, Ill. in granting preliminary approval to similar changes.

"As a diocese we have come to a fork in the road," Pittsburgh Bishop Robert Duncan said before lay delegates approved the measures 118 to 58 and clergy voted 109 to 24. "Indeed, it has become clear that our understandings are not only different, but mutually exclusive, even destructive to one another."

The amendments do not become final unless they are again approved at the next diocesan convention in November 2008. San Joaquin and Quincy have yet to take second votes on the changes in those dioceses, though San Joaquin is scheduled to do so next month.

The Pittsburgh diocese wants to join another province of the Anglican Communion, a loose-knit worldwide coalition of churches that align themselves with the Church of England. They also want like-minded parishes outside the 11-county Western Pennsylvania jurisdiction to be able to join the diocese.

Duncan said the diocese would try to find a way for more liberal believers to stay in the diocese "or be given freedom to separate from us and align more directly with the wider Episcopal Church."

The Episcopal Church referred comment to the Very Rev. George Werner, a Pittsburgh priest and former president of the church's House of Deputies, a legislative body comprised of clergy and lay members.

Werner praised Duncan for saying that he will try to have liberals and conservatives continue to share some facilities and programs, even if the split is finalized next year. He had predicted Thursday that the diocesan amendments would pass easily.

Werner was critical of the decision after Friday's vote,

"Splitting the community is not a good thing," Werner said. "I am one who has always worked to keep us together. Sinners though we are, the whole is greater than the sum of our parts."

Werner noted that the church's Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori has threatened to discipline Duncan if he continues to support the split. That could result in Duncan's case being put before a Title IV committee, a sort of grand jury that could charge him with breaking communion with the church and lead to his ouster.

Civil lawsuits are also possible, Werner said, because Jefferts Schori has a fiduciary duty under Pennsylvania law to safeguard church assets, as does Duncan.

The Pittsburgh diocese and Duncan are among the more vocal conservatives who believe that the Episcopal Church, the Anglican body in the U.S., is abandoning the authority of Scripture and traditional teachings on truth, salvation and the divinity of Jesus Christ.

A majority of the 77 million-member Anglican Communion hold traditional views that homosexuality is condemned by Scripture, while a majority in the Episcopal Church do not.