The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has admitted the Anglican Communion faced a "messy" future over issues such as gay blessings and homosexuality.
Dr Williams said the current row over sexuality within the Church was only one area where "faultlines" were spreading.
"I don't expect the next few years to be anything other than messy as far as all this is concerned," he wrote in New Directions, a journal for traditionalist clergy.
"The question is not whether we can avoid mess, but whether we can hang on to common convictions about divine grace and initiative."
Dr Williams' remarks come before an emergency summit next month of the 38 Anglican primates - leaders of the Anglican provinces - in an attempt to avoid a split within the church.
The crisis was sparked by the decision of the Episcopal Church, the US equivalent of the Church of England, to elect Canon Gene Robinson, a divorced man, as the Anglican's first openly gay bishop.
A row also erupted in the UK in June after gay priest Canon Jeffrey John was nominated to become the new Bishop of Reading. After weeks of bitter argument within the Anglican Church, he decided not to take up the post.
It has been reported that Conservative evangelicals in Asia and Africa plan to force Dr Williams to expel the US Church from the Anglican fold over the Canon Robinson affair.
Dr Williams' article, written before the decision was made by the US Church to elect Canon Robinson, has been interpreted as hinting at allowing a traditionalist enclave to be created to avoid a such a split.
He wrote: "I suspect that those who speak of new alignments and new patterns, of the weakening of territorial jurisdiction and the like, are seeing the situation pretty accurately."