The Anglican Church has edged closer to a schism after it called on the Canadian and US churches to quit one of its key bodies until 2008 while they reconsider their support for gay bishops.
The leaders of the world's Anglican churches issued their ultimatum late on Thursday at the end of a four-day meeting in Northern Ireland.
If the US and Canadian churches agree to the request it could be seen as the first step toward a threatened breakup of the united Anglican Church after 450 years.
"We as a body continue to address the situations which have arisen in North America with the utmost seriousness," the church said in a statement released late on Thursday at the end of a meeting of the world's Anglican leaders in Northern Ireland.
"We request that the Episcopal Church (USA) and the Anglican Church of Canada voluntarily withdraw their members from the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC)."
The statement added that the withdrawal of the two churches should be reviewed in 2008 at the Lambeth Conference, the 10-yearly meeting of all Anglican bishops.
The Anglican Church's crisis erupted in 2003 with the ordination of Mr Gene Robinson, the church's first openly gay bishop, in the United States, home to 2.3 million Anglicans.
Traditionalist Anglicans, particularly in Africa, were enraged. They are now considering ways to redraw the Anglican world map to exclude liberal provinces.
African church leaders fear that if Anglicanism takes a lenient line on homosexuality, its followers will desert its pews for more conservative Christian churches or Islam.
US bishops expressed regret for having consecrated Mr Robinson but said they needed more time to respond to a call to halt such ordinations and stop blessing same-sex marriages.