Key Meeting Expected to Set Future Course for Divided Anglicans

Some in the Episcopal Church strongly feel that they need to repent and change course while other Episcopalians feel they need to maintain and stay their course - a course that has divided the worldwide Anglican Communion to a near schism.

Responses from around a third of the Episcopal Church's dioceses have been sent to the House of Bishops to help them as they meet this week amid forecasts of rupture in the third largest Christian denomination in the world.

The House of Bishops has invited the Most Rev Dr Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury and spiritual head of the Communion, to New Orleans for their semiannual September 20-25 meeting.

It is the first time Dr Williams is meeting with the Episcopal House of Bishops since the 2003 consecration of openly gay bishop, V Gene Robinson of New Hampshire, which heightened controversy in the 77-million-member Communion.

Dr Williams is hoping he can hold together the increasingly divided Communion.

"This is the most significant meeting in the last three years," said the Rev Ephraim Radner, a leading Episcopal conservative, according to The New York Times. "I'm not saying it will resolve everything, but it will set in motion responses that have been brewing for a long time. It doesn't matter what happens, there's going to be response from a whole range of folks in the Anglican Communion that will determine the future of communion."

At the top of the agenda for this week's meeting is the September 30 deadline the Episcopal Church faces to respond to requests by leaders in the Anglican Communion to make an unequivocal pledge not to consecrate another openly gay bishop or authorise blessings for same-sex unions.

Leading up to the meeting in New Orleans, a 15-page study document - "Communion Matters: A Study Document for The Episcopal Church" - was released on June 1 to help the House of Bishops form a response to the requests, which they are expected to formulate this week.

The study document contains reflections and questions on why relationships with the global Anglican family matter, and the extent to which the Episcopal Church could live together with the Communion in light of the seemingly "irreconcilable differences".

Without giving too much away before the Episcopal bishops read the responses, Alabama Bishop Henry N Parsley said people across the board say the Communion is "enormously valuable" to them, according to the Episcopal News Service.

Conservative Anglicans, however, are not optimistic that the Episcopal Church will stay in line with the global family. Already, the conservative Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh began a formal process last week that would keep the diocese aligned with mainstream Anglicanism should the Episcopal Church refuse the terms of the Anglican leaders' requests.

"[I]t appears the time has come to begin the process of realignment within the Anglican Communion," said Pittsburgh Bishop Robert Duncan. "Where are we going? Nowhere. We stand where we have always stood. We are who we have always been. It is the Episcopal Church that has moved. It is the Episcopal Church that has become something new."

The Dioceses of Quincy, Illinois, and San Joaquin, California, are also taking steps toward breaking with the US body and aligning with an overseas, like-minded Anglican province.

If the Episcopal Church does not make the unequivocal pledge that Anglican leaders have requested, it risks a reduced role and representation in the Communion at the very least.