“We reaffirm the traditional teaching of the Church on marriage, marital fidelity and sexual chastity as the standard of Christian sexual morality,” it said. “Candidates for ordination are expected to conform to this standard.”

However, 21 bishops disagreed, publicly stating that gay sexual relationships were “no less a sign to the world of God’s love” as traditional marriages. These bishops — including the Rt. Rev. Edmund Browning, who was chosen as America’s presiding bishop six years later — warned that since “we are answerable before almighty God … we cannot accept these recommendations or implement them in our dioceses.”

It was the start of an ecclesiastical war that has dominated the 70-million-member Anglican Communion for decades.

Then again, this conflict may have started in the 1960s, when Bishop James Pike was censured for his “offensive” and “irresponsible” views questioning the Virgin Birth, the divinity of Jesus, the Trinity and other ancient doctrines. And in 1977 a high-profile leader — Bishop Paul Moore of New York — created a firestorm when he ordained a priest who identified herself as a lesbian.

It’s hard to understand this story without some grasp of this complicated timeline. However, news reports regularly chop off several decades, thus making it appear that these doctrinal clashes began with the 2003 consecration of V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire as the first openly gay, non-celibate Episcopal bishop.

“This whole conflict is actually about the Bible and how you interpret it,” said the Rev. George Conger, a correspondent for The Church of England Newspaper. “The polite warfare has been going on for 30 or 40 years. The open warfare truly began in 1997, when the archbishops from Africa and the rest of the Global South met in Jerusalem and decided to let their voices be heard.”

In addition to events in the late 1970s, other crucial dates on this timeline include:

* 1989 — Bishop John Spong of the Diocese of Newark ordains the first homosexual priest who is openly living in a same-sex relationship.

* 1994 — Spong drafts his Koinonia Statement affirming the ordination of gays and lesbians living in faithful, monogamous relationships — with the support of 90 bishops. He also publishes his 12 theses for a liberal Reformation, rejecting belief in the transcendent, personal God of the Bible.

* 1996 — An ecclesiastical court dismisses heresy charges against Bishop Walter Righter, after another controversial ordination. The court says Episcopalians have “no clear doctrine” clearly forbidding the ordination of persons who are sexually active outside of marriage.

* 1998 — In a stunning defeat for the left, bishops at the global Lambeth Conference in Canterbury declare that sex outside of marriage, including gay sex, is “incompatible with scripture” and call for a ban on same-sex-union rites and the ordination of non-celibate homosexuals.

* 2000 — Archbishops from Rwanda and Southeast Asia consecrate two American conservatives as missionary bishops, escalating global efforts to form an alternative structure for Anglican traditionalists in North America.

Since the consecration of Robinson, the Episcopal Church has made several attempts to appease the large, overwhelmingly conservative Anglican churches of Africa, Asia and other regions overseas. Meanwhile, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has attempted to calm nerves, while starting the process of creating a doctrinal covenant that he hopes will provide unity on issues of faith and practice.

However, early this week the U.S. House of Bishops voted — by a 99-45 margin — to allow dioceses to proceed with the selection of gays and lesbians for “any ordained ministry.” This effectively overturned a resolution passed at the 2006 General Convention that urged dioceses to refrain from consecrating bishops whose “manner of life” would offend other churches in the Anglican Communion.

“The key question is whether this is a national story or a global story,” said the Rev. Kendall Harmon, canon theologian for the conservative Diocese of South Carolina. “The way most people tell this story, America initiates things and then the rest of the world responds. Then America responds and you repeat this process over and over.

“You see, America is at the center of everything. It’s the American church and its concerns that count the most. Meanwhile, Anglicans around the world are trying to tell a different story.”

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She led the International Concerns Committee of her denomination’s executive council, helped create her diocese’s Global Women’s Fund and has worked as a consultant on issues of cultural sensitivity. In some circles, she is known as the bishop who dared to rap during a “Hip Hop Mass” a few years ago in the Bronx.

“My sistas and brothas, all my homies and peeps, stay up — keep your head up, holla back and go forth and tell it like it is,” proclaimed the bishop, in her benediction.

Thus, the diminutive, white-haired assistant bishop was an unlikely figure to inspire bold, angry headlines during the recent Lambeth Conference of bishops from the global Anglican Communion. This 20-day gathering had been carefully planned by the archbishop of Canterbury and his staff to focus on prayer, Bible study and small-group sessions called “Indabas” — a Zulu term for tribal meetings — in private settings that did not include journalists.

It was especially important not to inflame already painful disputes between Third World traditionalists and liberals in the United States, Canada, England and elsewhere.

Then, during planned discussions of domestic violence, Roskam spoke out on an unlikely topic — bishops who beat their wives.

“We have 700 men here. Do you think any of them beat their wives? Chances are they do,” argued Roskam, in The Lambeth Witness, a daily newsletter for gay-rights supporters in the 77-million-member Anglican Communion. “The most devout Christians beat their wives. … Many of our bishops come from places where it is culturally accepted to beat your wife. In that regard, it makes conversation quite difficult.”

The key, she added, is that, “Violence against women, and violence against children for that matter, is violence against the defenseless. With women, it goes hand-in-hand with misogyny.”

The New York bishop’s accusations rocked the conference, which was already tense due to the absence of about 280 conservative bishops — many from Nigeria and Uganda — who declined to attend due to the presence of U.S. leaders who backed the 2003 consecration of the openly gay and noncelibate Bishop Gene Robinson of New Hampshire. Only 617 Anglican bishops pre-registered and some of those failed to attend, according to a report in The Living Church magazine. Thus, nearly a quarter of the bishops in attendance came from the small, but wealthy, U.S. Episcopal Church.

The most damaging part of Roskam’s pronouncement was her tone of moral and cultural superiority, noted commentator Riazat Butt. It was easy for bishops from the Global South to read between the lines and find painful traces of colonialism.

“What bishops should be … concerned about is her insinuation that a non-white culture leads to domestic violence and that white, western culture is too civilized and too advanced to allow such atrocities to occur,” argued Butt, in The Guardian. “Roskam fails to recognize that domestic violence affects people regardless of their class, ethnicity, religion, gender or geography.”

The whole episode brought back memories of the 1998 Lambeth Conference, when a rising tide of African and Asian votes helped produce a pivotal resolution — the vote was 526 in favor, with 70 opposed and 45 abstentions — stating that sex outside of marriage, including gay sex, is “incompatible with scripture.”

The Anglican primate of Scotland said that particular resolution left him feeling “lynched” and was the result of Third World bishops trying to “Islamify Christianity, making it more severe, Protestant and legalistic.” One outspoken American bishop complained that many Africans have “moved out of animism into a very superstitious kind of Christianity.”

Now, a decade later, a female bishop from a liberal diocese in America provided new evidence that these kinds of cultural stereotypes are hard to bury.

This kind of guilt-by-association game is not going to ease tensions in the Anglican Communion, noted Archbishop of York John Sentamu.

“I have never beaten my wife, although I can’t talk about other people,” Sentamu told the London Times. “There is a danger of stereotyping people because of the culture they come from and assuming they must surely be doing it. … I hope Bishop Catherine has got figures and numbers and people. Because if not, she is in danger of causing an unnecessary rumpus.”

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In the most recent clash the nation’s high court waved off an attempt by evangelicals to attack “Jerry Springer — The Opera.”

To no one’s surprise, a coalition of powerful Brits has issued yet another call to kill the blasphemy law. It’s a sign of the times.

“The ancient common law of blasphemous libel purports to protect beliefs rather than people or communities,” said a statement backed by activists ranging from the creator of the BBC comedy “The Office” to the retired Archbishop of Canterbury. “Most religious commentators are of the view that the Almighty does not need the ‘protection’ of such a law. Far from protecting public order … it actually damages social cohesion.”

The conviction behind blasphemy laws is that cultures need some kind of religious order to maintain social cohesion, said Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali of Rochester, a key voice in Britain’s ongoing debates about faith and culture.

Defenders of Britain’s law would insist, he noted, that “it provides some sort of basis to the British constitution, which is, of course, the queen and parliament, under God. So if you protect the queen and protect the parliament, then you also need to protect … the honor of God.”

But the question now is whether Britain can find a common set of values or laws, said Nazir-Ali, in a dialogue with journalists from around the world.

The timing of that 2006 seminar — organized by my Oxford Centre for Religion & Public Life colleagues — was crucial. Blasphemy was in the news because of Danish cartoons mocking the prophet Muhammad. Then there would be more tension when Sudanese officials arrested a teacher for allowing her young class to name its teddy bear “Muhammad.”

Nazir-Ali recently made headlines of his own when he claimed that radical forms of Islam have turned parts of England into “no-go zones” in which it is dangerous for non-Muslims to live, work and minister. The nation, he lamented, is breaking into “self-contained,” segregated communities in which people live “parallel lives.” The bishop and his family are living under police protection after receiving death threats.

“Converts to Christian faith also find it difficult or impossible to live in certain areas,” noted Nazir-Ali, who was raised in Pakistan in a family with Christian and Muslim roots. “It is critically important to all that the freedom to discuss freely and perhaps to have our views changed, whether in politics, religion or science, be encouraged and not diminished.”

Soon after this controversy, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams threw more fuel on the multicultural fire by saying that it “seems inevitable” that elements of Muslim Sharia law will be included in the British legal system.

In a complicated lecture, Williams said it might be possible to develop a “scheme in which individuals retain the liberty to choose the jurisdiction under which they will seek to resolve certain carefully specified matters.” Sharia courts might be involved in some “aspects of marital law, the regulation of financial transactions and authorized structures of mediation and conflict resolution.”

News reports about the archbishop’s views created a firestorm. Critics stopped just short of accusing Williams of committing a secular brand of blasphemy, if that is possible in modern Britain.

As the headlines raged on, Nazir-Ali stressed that all of these conflicts point to one reality.

Sooner or later, he said, British leaders will have to decide whether to affirm or deny centuries of English law that is “rooted in the Judeo-Christian tradition.” The various schools of Islamic law that exist today, he stressed, bring with them their own traditions and assumptions and compromise will be next to impossible.

“The Sharia is not a generalized collection of dispositions. It is articulated in highly concrete codes,” he wrote, at his diocesan website. “It would have to be one or the other, or all, of these which would have to be recognized. All of these schools would be in tension with the English legal tradition on questions like monogamy, provisions of divorce, the rights of women, custody of children, laws of inheritance and of evidence.

“This is not to mention the relation of freedom of belief and expression to provisions for blasphemy and apostasy.”

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The most popular answers sound something like this: “Ten. One to change the bulb and nine to start a newsletter about the irreplaceability of the original bulb.”

Episcopalians do love their traditions, a trait that they share with everyone else in the Anglican Communion. Nevertheless, the reason the world’s 77 million Anglicans fight so much is that many cherish some traditions more than others or sincerely believe that, in changing times, some traditions trump others.

Consider, for example, the recent letter from Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori to Nigerian Archbishop Peter J. Akinola, urging him not to visit the United States to lead rites installing a bishop here to minister to those who believe the Episcopal Church has veered into heresy.

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recording of the “Ave Maria” for Father Paul Zahl to feel that old,

familiar tug at his heartstrings.

Then came the voices in his head asking those nagging questions that many

weary Episcopalians have pondered in recent decades: “Why keep fighting?

Why not join the Roman Catholic Church?”

Every now and then, Zahl feels another urge to “swim the Tiber.” This is

somewhat problematic because he is dean of the Trinity School for

Ministry in Ambridge, Pa., a post that makes him a leader among

Evangelicals in the embattled Episcopal Church and a strategic voice in

the broadly Protestant, low-church wing of the global Anglican Communion.

“I could become a Roman Catholic in a heartbeat,” said Zahl. “But the

minute I say that, I stop and think about it and I know all the reasons

that I am an Evangelical and why my spiritual home is in Anglicanism. …

But that doesn’t mean that I don’t understand why so many people —

people I love and respect — have fled to Rome and why many more will

follow them.”

Many Episcopalians, stressed Zahl, are seeking what he called a “truly

objective form of church life” that provides authoritative answers to the

moral and doctrinal questions that have — for at least a quarter century

— caused bitter conflict and declining statistics in the American branch

of Anglicanism. Their complaints run much deeper than mere discontent

over the 2003 consecration of a noncelibate homosexual as the Episcopal

bishop in New Hampshire.

But if they want that kind of church structure they are going to have to

join that kind of church, he said. The Anglican approach, built on a

unique blend of compromises between Protestantism and Catholicism, will

never be enough.

“Anglicanism can only give you an ersatz form of that kind of church,”

said Zahl, a Harvard man whose graduate work took him to England and

Germany. “If you want the kind of authority that comes with Roman

Catholicism then you should run, not walk, to enter the Church of Rome. …

That’s where you have to go to find it. You either become a Catholic or

you simply stop asking the big questions about ecclesiastical structure.

You move on.”

This will be a painful step for some Episcopalians to take, in an age

when newspapers are full of reports about legal and theological cracks in

the foundations of the mother Church of England and its bickering

relatives around the world.

The big news on this side of the Atlantic Ocean is that eight

congregations in Northern Virginia — including two of America’s most

historic parishes — have voted to leave the Episcopal Church to join a

new missionary effort tied to the conservative, rapidly growing Anglican

Church of Nigeria.

Meanwhile, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams faces a revolt in his

own backyard, with Evangelical leaders saying they will revolt if he does

not allow them to answer to conservative bishops, rather than to

liberals. And then there was that Sunday Times report claiming that Pope

Benedict XVI has asked officials in his Congregation for the Doctrine of

the Faith to research ways to reach out to disaffected Anglicans.

The temptation, according to Zahl, is for Episcopalians caught in these

conflicts to assume there is “some church body out there, some

supervising entity or person, which, when we find it, will be seen

definitely to be ‘The One.’ The question of ‘Whither?’ is based on the

idea that there is, at this point in time, a verifiable protecting safe

place.”

Instead, those committed to Anglicanism must embrace another image of the

Christian life found in scripture, argued Zahl, in a missive to

supporters of his seminary. While it will be hard, they should see

themselves as the “wandering people of God” who must spend a long time in

the wilderness as they “seek the city which is to come.”

It will be hard to find clarity and unity during the years ahead, he said.

“I hold out exactly no hope of a safe haven in the Church of England,”

said Zahl. “If you have any hope of finding safe answers for the big

questions of church identity within Anglicanism, then you are going to

need to be patient because that is not going to happen anytime soon.”

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Thus, the Anglican priest has little sympathy for those who want to wiggle out of translating the Latin word “Credo” — the root for “creed” — as “we believe” instead of the more personal and definitive “I believe.”

“Of course ‘Credo’ means ‘I believe.’ … And it’s the same thing in the Greek Orthodox liturgy, because ‘Pisteuo’ can only mean ‘I believe,’ ” he said.

These liturgical wars have been going on for decades and the combatants are always seeking allies at other altars. This is how Toon began corresponding with the leader of the Vatican’s influential Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. This was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of Germany — now Pope Benedict XVI.

The cardinal agreed that it wasn’t heresy to translate “Credo” as “we believe.” But Ratzinger also said that this error would eventually need to be corrected in the Roman Missal, said Toon. They had a friendly series of exchanges.

Now that Ratzinger is pope, contacts of this sort have gained symbolic weight. Toon and others in the balkanized Anglican Communion have good reason to wonder if this articulate, outspoken Catholic intellectual may soon play a role in their tense debates about sex, worship and doctrine.

Progressive Episcopalians certainly remember a stunning letter that Ratzinger sent soon after the 2003 election of the openly gay Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson of New Hampshire.

Writing to a Texas conference held by the conservative American Anglican Council, he wrote: “The significance of your meeting is sensed far beyond Plano, and even in this City from which Saint Augustine of Canterbury was sent to confirm and strengthen the preaching of Christ’s Gospel in England. … In the Church of Christ there is a unity in truth and a communion of grace which transcend the borders of any nation.”

The address on the envelope was even more symbolic than the text, with its familiar John Paul emphasis on truth as a source of unity, not division. What mattered most was that Ratzinger sent the letter directly to the Episcopal traditionalists, bypassing the office of U.S. Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold in New York City.

Symbolic gestures of this kind are taken seriously in marble sanctuaries. If there is anything that Anglican prelates understand it is the subtle politics of protocol.

Thus, it was significant that Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams attended the inaugural mass for Benedict XVI, becoming only the second occupant of the throne in Canterbury to witness such a rite since the Reformation. Afterwards, the former Oxford don greeted the pope in German and presented him with a pectoral cross.

Ah, yes, but journalists and photographers paid close attention to the precise details of this rite of reception.

“Symbolism is everything,” opined David Virtue, a conservative Anglican whose Internet reports circle the globe. “When the new pope met with the patriarchs from the Orthodox churches there were public embraces and kisses, but when Benedict XVI met Williams there was only a handshake. … Williams edged forward perhaps hoping for a papal embrace but it was not forthcoming.”

Then the London Times reported that, behind the scenes, Vatican authorities had been corresponding with the Traditional Anglican Communion inside the Church of England, discussing the possible formation of an Anglican-rite body in communion with Rome. This network claims the loyalty of more than 400,000 Anglicans around the world and perhaps 500 parishes.

Who was the key Vatican official behind these talks? According to Archbishop John Hepworth of Australia, it was Cardinal Ratzinger.

It is easy to make too much of these contacts, said Toon. After all, Benedict XVI supports traditional Anglicans in the Third World and elsewhere on many issues, but he disagrees with some of their compromises — such as a softened stance against divorce.

“The new pope will continue to be a gracious friend,” said Toon. “But I think he will be much too busy — for some time — handling events in his own church to have more than a few words to say about all of these little Anglican groups and their affairs.”

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In Ireland’s new Book of Common Prayer, the modern rite proclaims: “Father, with this bread and this cup we do as Christ your Son commanded: we remember his passion and death, we celebrate his resurrection and ascension, and we look for the coming of his kingdom.

“Accept through him, our great high priest, this our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving; and as we eat and drink these holy gifts, grant by the power of the life-giving Spirit that we may be made one in your holy Church. … Amen.”

These familiar words failed to unite 38 archbishops when they gathered recently in the Dromantine Conference Centre in County Down, Northern Ireland. In fact, the Eucharistic table became the symbol of division.

The leaders of the Anglican Communion met for business, study and prayer, but could not share Holy Communion.

It’s hard to gather at the same altar when bishops lack a common understanding of words such as “salvation,” “resurrection,” “marriage” and even “God,” said Bishop C. FitzSimons Allison, an Anglican historian who is the retired bishop of South Carolina.

“You can’t hold a church together with appeals to human emotions. You need stronger stuff than that,” he said. “You can get by with bonds of affection at your local Rotary Club, but that won’t work for us right now. … You have to be of one mind on the doctrines that have united Christians through the ages.”

In headlines around the world, the clashes behind Dromantine’s high walls were caused by a familiar controversy — the ministry of New Hampshire Bishop V. Gene Robinson, a gay man living in a same-sex relationship.

The primates released a five-page communique that, in its most quoted passage, urgently requested that the “Episcopal Church (USA) and the Anglican Church of Canada voluntarily withdraw their members from the Anglican Consultative Council for the period leading up to the next Lambeth Conference” of the world’s bishops in 2008.

The North Americans quickly denied that they had agreed to stand down.

But reports circulated that conservatives, led by Nigerian Archbishop Peter Akinola and others, had moved beyond words into dramatic action. Before the meeting, Akinola wrote Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and warned that many Third World archbishops would not celebrate communion with U.S. Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold. There are 2 million Episcopalians and between 40 million and 50 million Anglicans in Africa alone.

Seeking compromise, Williams proposed bringing in a chaplain to lead a daily Eucharist.

“Archbishop Akinola responded it was not the worthiness of the minister that prompted their objections, but their belief that unity of doctrine preceded unity of worship. It was not a question of receiving ‘from’ Bishop Griswold, but ‘with’ Bishop Griswold,” wrote the Rev. George Conger, in the Church of England Newspaper.

Williams relented, “formally recognizing the state of broken Eucharistic communion,” wrote Conger. Some Third World archbishops, led by Archbishop Emmanuel Kolini of Rwanda, fasted for the four days.

Griswold was defiant, saying his church welcomes future opportunities to defend its actions on behalf of homosexual clergy, since its leaders believe they have “sought to act with integrity in response to the Spirit, and that we have worked, and continue to work, to honor the different perspectives very much present” in the church.

Yes, these are painful and sobering times, and Allison said he could understand the stance taken by Third World bishops.

After all, it has been a dozen years since he decided he could no longer, with a clear conscience, receive communion during meetings of the U.S. House of Bishops. During a Bible study, several bishops had said that they believed they worshipped a god that is “older and greater” than the God of the Bible. Others said they could not affirm this belief, but would not condemn it.

“This is apostasy,” Allison said.

When it came time for all the bishops to go to the altar and receive communion, Allison declined.

“If you do not share the same faith, you cannot share the same communion,” he said, recalling that moment. “When people start talking about new revelations and creating some kind of new faith, that’s when the red flags have to go up.”

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Stunned, Father George Carey asked the student for his response. He looked up and said: “I am confirmed. I am here because I want to follow.” The priest served him communion.

This scene occurred at St. Nicholas Parish in Durham, England, years before Carey began his decade-plus service as the 103rd Archbishop of Canterbury. Today, he still uses this story as a parable about spiritual seekers and those who are quick to judge.

But this kind of story has several levels, said the archbishop, speaking last week at the 25th anniversary celebration of the Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry in Ambridge, Pa. The student’s simple confession indicated that he wanted to start a journey. What spiritual leaders are supposed to do is embrace seekers and show them where God wants them to go.

This implies that there is an ultimate destination and even a true path. It is a sign of the times that making such a claim is controversial. So be it. Carey said he was delighted that the primates of the worldwide Anglican Communion recently took just such a stand.

They said: “We believe that God the eternal Son became human for our sake and that in the flesh and blood of Jesus of Nazareth God was uniquely present and active.” The archbishop added: “The statement is a full-blooded recommitment to the historic faith of the church. And to that wisdom of glory and weakness all Christians commit themselves.”

The key words in the primate’s statement are “uniquely present.” Many Anglicans, especially in the Third World, are convinced their communion’s powerful left wing believes that all spiritual paths are ultimately the same and have the same end. Jesus is one path to salvation, clarity, enlightenment or whatever. But other paths work just as well.

This fundamental disagreement leads to legions of bitter conflicts about biblical authority, creeds, sacraments and, of course, sexuality.

“God has given us sexuality. It is a mysterious gift,” Carey told a circle of reporters, before his address. “But I’m of the belief, and I have been consistent on this throughout my tenure, that any sexual relationships beyond the confines of heterosexual marriage is a deviation from scripture. … I don’t approve of that.”

The archbishop is used to hearing this question, because fights over the status of sexual acts outside of marriage have been tearing up the Anglican Communion for decades. This is true of virtually all mainline religious groups.

While known as conservative, Carey is - in keeping with the style of his office - a soft-spoken British diplomat who strives not to tread on ecclesiastical toes. He knew that he was in the United States and that its Episcopal hierarchy has a de facto policy of ordaining non-celibate gays and lesbians and allowing same-sex union rites. A church court has ruled that Episcopalians have no “core doctrines” on marriage and sex.

Yet Carey was speaking at an evangelical seminary, one that has served as a strategic bridge to Anglicans in the Third World, especially Africa and Asia. Thus, he gave journalists a candid answer and repeated this stance in his speech.

It is impossible to separate theology and morality, stressed the archbishop. At some point, church politics bleed into real life. The political becomes the personal.

“There have to be boundaries to pastoral care which result in pastoral discipline, just as there are boundaries to doctrinal orthodoxy,” he said. “To say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ is to accept his discipline. It is to place ourselves under his obedience. We cannot do what we please or believe whatever we decide suits us personally.”

There are those who disagree, often hiding their views in lofty language. Carey said he was reminded of one jester’s version of the Caesarea Phillippi encounter which begins with Jesus asking Peter: “Who do men say that I am?”

A postmodern Peter might answer: “You are the existentialist flux of Being shimmering in the signifying chains of inchoate Reality. You are the pre-existent Ground of our Being.”

To which, Carey noted, Jesus would certainly reply: “I am WHAT?”

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It is a time for soul searching. That will certainly be the case this year for Father David L. Moyer of the Church of the Good Shepherd in Rosemont, a sanctuary for Anglican traditionalists on the Philadelphia mainline. He chose to go on retreat at a convent, rather than enduring the pain of watching these services from a pew.

“I am a liturgical nut and I am not the kind of person who can just watch,” he said. “I just couldn’t take that emotionally, right now. I’d be thinking, ‘Now we need to do this’ and ‘Now it’s time to do that.’ It would be agonizing, not being at the altar.”

Moyer cannot serve at the altar for a simple reason — Pennsylvania Bishop Charles E. Bennison, Jr., has forbidden him to do so. The bishop has “inhibited” Moyer from his sacred duties, and is proceeding toward deposing him as a priest, because the rector of Good Shepherd has repeatedly denied Bennison the right to preach and celebrate the Eucharist in the parish.

Why would a priest risk his career by locking out his bishop?

“Charles Bennison has removed himself from the church,” said Moyer. “He has stepped outside the borders of the ancient Christian faith and of the Anglican tradition. … I would say that he is in fact a heretic, a false teacher.”

Both sides agree there is more to this standoff than power, $2 million in endowment money and the keys to a beautiful Gothic edifice. The bishop and his acolytes believe Moyer wants to split the diocese and the U.S. Episcopal Church. They note that Moyer leads the North American branch of Forward in Faith, a global network of Anglican conservatives.

Also, Moyer is a candidate to become an at-large bishop for traditionalists nationwide, following an upcoming election and consecration that would be held without the blessing of the American hierarchy. Moyer has strong ties to Third World archbishops and is scheduled to meet with several only days before a tense April 10-18 gathering of the Anglican primates in Canterbury.

Doctrine is at stake, too. Moyer responded to Bennison’s March 1 “inhibition of ministry” letter with a letter urging the bishop to defuse the crisis by publicly affirming four ancient Christian doctrines. These were the uniqueness of Jesus as “the only way to obtaining eternal salvation,” his “bodily Resurrection,” the “supremacy of the Holy Scriptures as the inspired Word of God” and that “sexual intimacy and genital relations are only properly expressed in a monogamous, heterosexual marital union.”

Bennison has not responded even though he is an outspoken, articulate advocate of changing church teachings on sex and salvation. During a 1997 forum, which was taped, the bishop was asked why he could embrace such sweeping doctrinal revisions. The church wrote the Bible, he responded. “Because we wrote the Bible, we can rewrite it.”

Meanwhile, the diocesan standing committee has stated the obvious: no bishop wants to have the rector of a powerful parish publicly calling him a heretic.

“A diocese cannot function without mutual love and respect for duly instituted authority,” stated the committee, in its report calling for disciplinary action against Moyer. “Since a Bishop’s authority is sacramental, a parish must receive its Bishop to preside at the Holy Eucharist for it to be in communion with the Bishop. The parish must be in communion with the Bishop to be in communion with the diocese. The parish must be in communion with its diocese in order to be in communion with the Episcopal Church and, through it, the Anglican Communion at large.”

But for Moyer, modern laws and ecclesiastical structures are not as important as the Bible and centuries of church tradition. Without a common core of doctrine, there can be no communion, he said. That is why he will fight on, even if that means sitting in a pew this Easter.

“I believe that souls are at risk. I really do believe that,” he said. “We cannot stand by and watch people being led into hell.”

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