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Some 103 top Anglicans, amid tight security and a media blackout, gathered last week on Egypt's Red Sea coast for the third Global South to South Encounter to address disunity in the 75-million-member Anglican Communion, the world's largest and one of the most influential Protestant bodies.

Gay ordinations, same-sex unions, and acceptance of the homosexual bishop, V. Gene Robinson, have sharply increased tensions among Anglicans worldwide. Talk of schism is no longer speculation.

The world's leading Anglican, Rowan Williams, archbishop of Canterbury, joined the conference for a day. He gave little or no open encouragement to conservatives that the Episcopal Church (USA), the Anglican Church of Canada, or any other Anglican province would face meaningful penalties for participating in gay ordinations, same-sex unions, or the consecration of Robinson as bishop.

After five days of meetings, the group issued an eight-page statement, in which the delegates said:

Our own Anglican Communion sadly continues to be weakened by unchecked revisionist teaching and practices, which undermine the divine authority of Scripture. The Anglican Communion is severely wounded by the witness of errant principles of faith and practice which in many parts of our communion have adversely affected our efforts to take the gospel to those in need of God's redeeming and saving love.

The delegates made the following commitments:

• "We express full confidence in the supremacy and clarity of Scripture and pledge full obedience to the whole counsel of God's Word."
• "We in the Global South endorse the concept of an Anglican Covenant (mooted in the Windsor Report) and commit ourselves as full partners in the process of its formulation. We are seeking a covenant that is rooted in historic faith and formularies and that provides a biblical foundation for our life, ministry, and mission as a communion."
• "We reject the expectation that our lives in Christ should conform to the misguided theological, cultural, and sociological norms associated with sections of the West."

Few Anglican archbishops were willing to comment openly after the meeting. But delegate Stephen Noll, vice chancellor of Uganda Christian University, noted a division within the Anglican Communion was inevitable. American Episcopalians recently held a service of consecration at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., for a top leader of the Metropolitan Community Church, which was created by and for the gay religious community.

"The Episcopal Church (USA) intends to send a signal that they are going in a certain direction and will not turn back," Noll said. "It confirms our sad realization that the Episcopal Church as it is now constituted is unreformable. It is a sad day to see your own birth mother fall away."

The Embattled Conservatives
In 1998, top Anglicans met for their once-per-decade Lambeth Conference and overwhelmingly voted that homosexual conduct was "contrary to Scripture." Since that time, theologically liberal Anglicans (mostly of the U.S. Episcopal Church, Church of England, and Anglican Church of Canada) have undermined that 1998 vote, moving the Anglican Communion toward acceptance of homosexual behavior as permissible for bishops, priests, and everyday church members.

The success of the Anglican left wing has been accompanied by the inability of conservatives to agree on goals and strategies. While some conservatives are committed to reform through the formal church process (the inside strategy), others want to create a rival global organization that would be biblical, reformed, and catholic (the outside strategy). The Anglican Communion is organized into more than 35 highly autonomous provinces around the world.

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November (Web-only) 2005, Vol. 49