Conservative archbishops attending Anglican crisis talks will demonstrate their anger with their liberal counterparts by refusing to receive Holy Communion alongside them.
The church's primates, the heads of the 38 self-governing provinces that make up the worldwide church, are gathering in Northern Ireland in an effort to avert schism over homosexuality.
Chaired by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, the five-day meeting could descend into a bitter confrontation and officials are not discounting the possibility of walkouts.
Church leaders are warning that the crisis is the most severe since the Reformation of the 16th century, out of which Anglicanism developed.
The conservative primates, mainly from Africa and Asia, are seething with the liberals in America for consecrating Anglicanism's first openly homosexual bishop, Gene Robinson in the diocese of New Hampshire, and blessing gay "marriages".
They will demand that the liberal leadership of the American Episcopal Church repent by the end of May or is suspended from the worldwide church, and they will seek similar sanctions against liberals in Canada.
The liberal wing, however, is so far showing no sign of complying with these demands.
On Sunday the Right Reverend Greg Venables, the British expatriate conservative evangelical who is primate of the province of the Southern Cone - the 22,000 Anglicans in South America - demanded that the American church be given only a short time to repent for electing Bishop Robinson.
"This is about repentance that says I have done wrong, over a very few months, otherwise there has to be some sanction," he told the BBC.
He and his colleagues, making up a little under half the total, have been co-ordinating strategies in secret meetings with the advice of English and American conservatives, in advance of this week's meeting.
Dr Williams, who is chairing the meeting, must attempt to mediate between the warring factions without any papal-style power to impose a solution.
According to insiders, Archbishop Peter Akinola, the Primate of Nigeria, has warned Dr Williams that the conservatives will boycott the daily church services if the liberals are there.
The problem could be at its most acute when Dr Williams personally presides at communion - a sacrament supposed to symbolise the unity of the church - because Archbishop Akinola is thought to represent up to half of the 38 primates.
The conservatives are also understood to be plotting to tear up the official agenda because they fear that it will limit the time spent on debating the Windsor report, which Dr Williams hopes could still preserve unity. The report examined the legal, theological and practical implications of the actions of the North American church.
Insiders said that of the 22 sessions planned over five days, only five are focused specifically on the Windsor report. Much time is taken up with prayer and Bible study.
Conservatives want much more time for the discussions of the Windsor report so that they can reach a clear resolution to the crisis. But officials hope that the other issues will demonstrate that the church's shared problems outweigh its differences.