Conservative members of the Anglican Communion who oppose the liberal attitude of the church in America to issues like homosexuality are organizing their own meeting on the future of the worldwide communion. The summit is scheduled for July 15-22, just before the Lambeth Conference, a meeting of Anglican bishops that occurs once every 10 years to discuss church doctrine and policy.

The Guardian reports:

Conservative Anglican leaders have revealed plans for a breakaway summit for the hundreds of bishops who are expected to defy the archbishop of Canterbury by boycotting the Lambeth Conference.Up to a third of the Anglican Church’s 900 bishops could boycott the conference in protest at the perceived fudging by the archbishop, Rowan Williams, over the U.S. Episcopal Church’s attitude to gay clergy.Organisers of the Global Anglican Future Conference say their meeting, to be held in Jerusalem, will not be a rival to Lambeth but will “provide opportunities for fellowship and care for those who have decided not to attend Lambeth.”A website promoting the new summit, announced six weeks before Williams’s flagship conference, says the 80-million-strong Anglican Communion is “divided into liberal and conservative factions” and is near to breaking up over the consecration in 2003 of the gay priest Gene Robinson as bishop of New Hampshire. …The conservative coalition is led by the archbishop of Nigeria, Peter Akinola, and Church of England supporters include Michael Nazir-Ali, the bishop of Rochester, who was recently voted fourth-most popular Anglican of the year, and the bishop of Lewes, Wallace Benn.

The conservative Anglican movement now has the support of more than 30 million Anglicans. The growing division with the Anglican Communion and the move toward conservatism could result in a closer alignment of portions of the communion with the more conservative Catholic Church. There have already been indications of this happening. This is something to watch, as biblical prophecy foretells the unification of the Protestant churches with their Roman Catholic mother church. Read “The Significance of Anglicans Turning Catholic” for more.