Amman, Jordan - Less than a month ahead of a global gathering of Anglican leaders, conservative bishops angry about the liberalism of churches in the United States, Canada and elsewhere are meeting for a strategy summit in Jordan and Israel.
Organizers of the Global Anglican Future Conference say they will not formally break with the 77 million-member Anglican family when the meeting ends June 29. Even so, the gathering is a clear challenge to Anglicans who want their fellowship to remain unchanged.
"This is a show of force, unity and global significance," said the Rev. Peter Moore, former dean of Trinity Episcopal School of Ministry, a conservative Pennsylvania seminary. "The Anglican Communion is in the process of breaking up. What will emerge from that, I don't know."
The event, starting Wednesday with closed-door sessions in Amman, Jordan, moves Sunday to Jerusalem for public discussions and visits to holy sites. About 1,000 attendees _ including bishops, clergy, lay people and their families _ are expected in Israel.
The timing is key.
The summit occurs one month before the Lambeth Conference, the once-a-decade meeting of all Anglican bishops, organized by their spiritual leader, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams.
Many of the estimated 280 bishops attending the conservative summit are boycotting Lambeth, mainly because Williams invited bishops from the U.S. Episcopal Church, the Anglican Church of Canada and elsewhere who believe that the Bible permits committed gay relationships.
The Episcopal Church _ the U.S. Anglican body _ caused an uproar in 2003 by approving the first openly gay bishop, the Most Rev. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire. Williams barred Robinson from Lambeth, but included the American bishops who consecrated him.
More conflict arose last weekend when it was revealed that two male Church of England priests exchanged rings and vows in a May 31 church ceremony in London. The bishop of London is investigating.
"Going to Lambeth? The question is `What for?'" said Archbishop Henry Orombi, leader of the conservative Anglican Church of Uganda and a lead organizer of the conservative meeting.
"We don't think three weeks in Lambeth under those circumstances will edify anybody," he told Anglican TV Ministries, an independent traditionalist group, last month. "There will be more conflicts rather than fellowship. It's not going to be helpful."
The division is rooted in the shifting center of global Christianity.
The Anglican Communion is a loose association of churches that grew from the colonial missionary efforts of the Church of England. Most Anglicans in Africa, Asia and Latin America embraced the missionaries' traditional outlook.
In recent decades, as membership dwindled in liberal-leaning European and North American churches, the rolls of Global South churches, as they are known, expanded dramatically. The majority of Anglicans now live in developing countries and are scandalized by Northern views of Scripture.
The leadership of the conservative summit comes mainly from these provinces.
The top organizers are Orombi, along with the archbishops _ called primates _ of the Anglican churches of Nigeria, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and the Southern Cone based in Argentina. U.S. conservatives, a minority within the Episcopal Church, and British Anglicans also are playing important roles.
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"There is an air of certainty and clarity among the bishops going to GAFCON, which stifles debate and openness to those of other views," said Mark D. Chapman, lecturer in systematic theology at Ripon College Cuddesdon in Oxford, England. "This would change the soul of Anglicanism as an inclusive and tolerant church that is able to live with difference."
But Bishop Martyn Minns, head of the conservative Convocation of Anglicans in North America, said orthodox Anglicans are the ones being shut out.
Minns leads a network of breakaway Episcopal parishes based in Virginia that have affiliated with Nigerian Archbishop Peter Akinola. The Episcopal Diocese of Virginia has sued to keep the parish property _ worth millions of dollars _ that Minns' group wants to take with them.
Minns said it was "insulting" that Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori is sending a representative, Colorado Bishop Robert O'Neill, to be her "eyes and ears" at the Jerusalem events. The invitation-only summit will focus on joint ministries, relations with Muslims, training clergy and fighting poverty.
"We need to stop reacting to the latest American ideas and get along with the business of the Gospel," Minns said.
While the conference participants share a theological outlook, they disagree over what they should do next. Some have close relationships with North American and European dioceses, schools and ministries, and gain stature from their ties to a major world church. The communion is the world's third-largest Christian body, behind the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christian churches.
The Most Rev. Mouneer Anis, presiding bishop of Jerusalem and the Middle East, who was invited to the meeting, declined to attend. He urged organizers "not to make binding decisions which may result in dividing Anglicans in the Global South and elsewhere."