Conservative and liberal Episcopalians left their national meeting in Ohio this week upset by a measure that won last-minute approval asking for restraint on electing gay bishops.

Conservatives called the General Convention resolution meaningless since it fell far short of demands from top Anglican leaders for a moratorium. Liberals said the call for any restriction, no matter how mild, was offensive to gays.

But Episcopal leaders said the legislation, however inadequate, was critical to buying time for talks over whether the world’s Anglican churches can stay together despite their deep differences over the Bible and gay relationships.

The Maine delegation supported the compromise measure, Bishop Chilton Knudsen said in a phone interview Wednesday. “This is a compromise resolution supported by a broad spectrum in the church,” she said. “Like every other consensus action, it’s what everybody feels they can live with.”

Knudsen, who heads the Episcopal Diocese of Maine, represented Maine’s 17,000 Episcopalians in Columbus, Ohio, along with three priests and three lay members.

“This is an act of love,” she said of the compromise, passed one day after a more strongly worded resolution failed. “It sends a real message to the Anglican Communion that we want to stay with you.” Many Anglican leaders were angered by the 2003 consecration of the first openly gay Episcopal bishop, V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire. The compromise resolution, which Robinson supported, calls for restraint in consecrating bishops “whose manner of life presents a challenge to the wider church.”

It was passed in response to the Windsor Report’s demand that the Episcopal Church impose a moratorium on the election and consecration of gay and lesbian bishops. Conservative leaders around the world had asked for a much stronger response. The resolution that passed is nonbinding.

Knudsen said last week that before leaving for the triennial convention, members of her flock had told her and other members of the delegation that remaining part of the Anglican Communion should be their prime concern. The bishop of Maine supports the ordination of gay and lesbian priests and participated in Robinson’s consecration service.

Nevada Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, 52, who will become Episcopal presiding bishop in November, told delegates in the final hours of the meeting Wednesday that she did not like the resolution, since “I am fully committed to the full inclusion of gay and lesbian Christians in this church.”

But she said it would give the church a chance to find a “common mind.”

Her election on Sunday as the first woman to serve as presiding bishop in the U.S. stirred great excitement among Maine’s delegation. Knudsen said Wednesday that she already had invited Jefferts Schori, a Florida native who was an oceanographer before being ordained in 1994, to visit Maine.

Brenda Hamilton, a delegate from St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Newcastle, compared Jefforts Schori’s election to the election 20 years ago of the Rt. Rev. Barbara Harris, the first woman bishop elected in the Episcopal Church.

“We are stunned and joyful,” Hamilton wrote in a message posted Monday on the diocese’s Web site. “To be honest most of [the Maine delegation] had to admit that we had not given much thought to the possibility that our next presiding bishop could be a woman. … I am not sure that any of us imaged what the Holy Spirit was up to.”

Knudsen called the tone of the convention “outward looking” because of the convention’s focus on the Windsor Report and the denomination’s support of the goals set forth by the United Nations including the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger, combating HIV and AIDS, and ensuring environmental sustainability. Whether the actions taken this week by Episcopalians will satisfy Anglicans won’t be clear until 2008 when the communion meets at its international Lambeth Conference.

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, the communion’s spiritual leader, has been trying to broker a truce between conservative and liberal archbishops worldwide since Robinson’s election.

Williams released a statement Wednesday saying that the “devoted work” of the convention over a nine-day assembly shows how strong its concern is “to seek reconciliation” with Anglicans.

He also said the communion will “need to reflect carefully on the significance of what has been decided before we respond more fully.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.