NAIROBI, Kenya, Aug. 6 — Anglican church leaders across Africa, where homosexuality is publicly scorned, today denounced an Episcopal Church USA decision to install an openly gay bishop, and they predicted a schism within the global Anglican Communion unless that action was overturned.

Quoting scripture, church leaders angrily said that their American counterparts were deviating from the Bible by approving the Rev. Canon V. Gene Robinson, who has lived openly with his partner for many years, as the bishop of New Hampshire. Homosexuality, they said, is a sin that the church should do nothing to endorse.

"It's wrong and it's against the Bible," said the Rev. Joseph Mutie Kanuku, the bishop of the Machakos Diocese, east of Nairobi. "How can we go against God's words? Two men being joined is contrary to nature and contrary to the Bible."

Opposition was just as fierce in Asia, where bishops said they might meet next week to discuss cutting ties with the 3.2 million members of the Episcopal Church USA. "Practicing homosexuality is culturally and legally not acceptable here," Bishop Lim Cheng Ean, leader of the Anglican Church of West Malaysia, told The Associated Press.

Homosexuals in Africa remain closeted in all but South Africa, where there is somewhat more openness toward gays. From the pulpit and the presidential mansion, African leaders regularly condemn homosexuality as a Western lifestyle choice that is being exported. Faith healers regard it as the product of an evil spirit.

"I'm not denying that it is here," Father Kanuku said. "But it's not in the open. It's taboo. It's against the teachings of the Bible and we know it. Those who do it do it in shame."

Such antigay beliefs, common as well in Asia and South America, are difficult to ignore by a church that finds most of its growth in the developing world. Acknowledging that some within the church are "gravely concerned" by the elevation of an openly gay priest to bishop, the archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, spiritual head of the world's 79 million Anglicans, urged restraint among the faithful.

"Difficult days lie ahead for the Anglican Church," Archbishop Williams said in a statement issued in London. "It is my hope that the church in America and the rest of the Anglican Communion will have the opportunity to consider this development before significant and irrevocable decisions are made in response."

The turmoil presents Archbishop Williams with a huge crisis only months after his appointment. He is regarded as a liberal among Anglicans, one who has argued for tolerance of homosexuality while adhering to traditional values. Last month, Dr. Williams moved to avoid a split in the Church of England by persuading a celibate gay priest, Jeffrey John, to turn down an appointment as bishop of Reading.

Some of the fiercest opposition to Dr. John's appointment came from Nigeria and the archbishop of the 17.5-million-member Anglican Church of Nigeria, the Most Rev. Peter Akinola. Dr. Akinola has been just as outspoken about the elevation of Bishop-elect Robinson, calling for the severing of relations between his church and those dioceses that he believes are sanctioning sinful behavior.

In June, Dr. Akinola ordered his church to sever relations with the Diocese of New Westminster in Canada after officials there ratified a liturgy for same-sex marriages and presided at the marriage of a gay couple. The Nigerian church leader recently sent a letter to his members citing the financial repercussions of the stand against homosexuality.

"This means that we must become self-reliant as a matter of urgency so that we will not only meet our own needs locally but also those of our poor African brethren who have long depended on handouts from the rich churches of the Western world," Dr. Akinola wrote.

Anglican bishops across Kenya, where there are more than three million church members, signed a letter of protest today against the elevation of Bishop-elect Robinson. One of the signatories, Father Kanuku, said he planned to pray for the new bishop and for his church as well.

"You in the West may not consider it a sin but we in Africa do," he said in a telephone interview, referring to homosexuality. "We stand with the Bible. When we are wrong, those in the West should tell us. We are telling them this is wrong."

The bishop of the diocese that covers North Africa, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Somalia, the Rev. Dr. Mouneer Anis, portrayed the controversy as similarly grave.

"The Communion now faces a crisis over what holds us together and indeed whether we can remain together if we hold not merely adverse but contradictory views of the Scripture and what it teaches," he said, according to The Associated Press.

The protests are not unexpected. Last month, Anglican archbishops from Africa, Asia and Australia met with conservative American Episcopalians in Fairfax, Va., to warn of a church crisis if the Episcopal Church USA endorsed a gay bishop or blessed same-sex unions.

African church leaders are hoping their outspokenness toward Bishop-elect Robinson's elevation will have the same effect as the earlier outcry against Dr. John. In his letter withdrawing his appointment, Dr. John said he was acting "in view of the damage my consecration might cause to the unity of the Church."