He denounced as speculation reports that an upcoming meeting in Egypt would decide the future of the 80 million-strong Anglican Communion.

Now it is important to understand that while this is not a matter of semantics one needs to understand how deeply nuanced such a statement is.

Since the 1998 Lambeth Conference where homosexual behavior was overwhelmingly defeated (526 to 70) by the world's Anglican bishops, the Episcopal Church has pushed, in one forum after another, for actively homosexual persons to be accepted at all levels of church life, climaxing in the consecration of an avowed homosexual to the episcopacy, outraging not only the world's leading orthodox churches, but forcing 22 Anglican provinces to declare themselves in either impaired or broken communion with the U.S. Episcopal Church.

Archbishop Akinola has moved to the fore as the unofficial spokesman for all orthodox Anglican Christians and this was most apparent in a recent visit by him to New York City where he and three other primates challenged the revisionism of the Episcopal Church declaring it unacceptable, but fell short in stating that it would split the Communion in two. At a press conference for an awards dinner he said that he would choose his own friends, and not have them chosen for him. "Let there be no illusions, the [Anglican] Communion is broken and fragmented," he stormed.

Within days of returning to his country Akinola again spoke up, this time blasting the issue of civil partnerships for same sex persons in England, even though the Church of England endorsed the idea albeit with the proviso that homosexuals should remain celibate. Not good enough said Akinola. There must be a total repudiation of homosexual behavior and civil partnerships regardless of the relationship between church and state.

Incensed, Akinola then did the totally unexpected. He took everyone by surprise by announcing that he would carefully reword his church's constitution with all other Anglican provinces deleting all references to 'communion with the see of Canterbury' replacing it with a statement that he would only be in communion with those who maintained the 'Historic Faith, Doctrine, Sacrament and Discipline of the one Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church'. Emphasis was also placed on the 1662 version of the Book of Common Prayer and the historic Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion.

The Constitutional change also allowed the Church to create Convocations and Chaplaincies of like-minded faithful outside Nigeria. This effectively gives legal teeth to the Convocation of Anglican Nigerians in Americas (CANA) formed to give a worshiping refuge to thousands in the USA who no longer feel welcomed to worship in the liberal churches especially with the recent theological innovations encouraging practices which the Nigerians say are sin.

It was a brilliant move that took the wind out of the sails of just about everybody. Akinola added to his definitive stand by indicating that at an upcoming meeting in Alexandria, Egypt, would not see an ultimatum on the Anglican Communion and concluded by saying that the South/South meeting of bishops (sans the Brazilian Primate) would not be a business meeting concerned with power, politics and other such mundane things.

One hardly doubts that most of the African provinces and those orthodox provinces in the rest of the Anglican Communion will, in time, follow his lead and make similar constitutional changes.

Also ruled out was any sort of split between the offices of Canterbury and York which could have seen the orthodox come under the ecclesiastical wing of Archbishop John Sentanu of York with the liberal faction coming under Archbishop Rowan Williams. That option is dead.

Akinola's views were echoed by Southern Cone Archbishop Greg Venables who said "We are not going anywhere." He tempered his remarks by saying, "How we begin to realign, we don't know. I do not personally think the Anglican Communion will survive as we know it because we can't bring together the two elements, they are antithetical."

He then said the debate could drag on for another 10 years because the Anglican Communion was decentralized and had no mechanism for excluding any of its member churches. "As we look to the future, it's possible that two Anglican expressions will come out of this," Venables said.

Venables said the debate tearing apart the Anglican Communion is not about human sexuality, but rather how strictly the Bible should be interpreted and whether faith principles are seen as relative or absolute -- a debate he said has divided Christianity since the 19th century.

Could a split eventually come? With no central curia, no pope, no magesterium, and no universal canons to call upon to dictate for the Anglican Communion (and certainly the US Episcopal Church would not sign on to any such idea), it is nearly impossible to have a formal schism, though it is clearly possible to have formal separation of one province from another.

What is also apparently emerging from all this is the sheer helplessness of the Archbishop of Canterbury to bring everyone to heel, and the failure of commissions, panels of reference to keep it altogether! The powerlessness of primatial gatherings to effectively stop revisionist bishops pouncing on orthodox priests and parishes is now plain for all to see. No universal Canon can be applied to help the Diocese of Recife and its bishop or the dozens of orthodox ECUSA parishes and the growing orthodox Canadian parishes facing the storm trooping tactics of an Archbishop Oliveira, an Andrew Smith (Connecticut) or Michael Ingham (New Westminster).

So what then does it all mean? Akinola has gone on record as saying, "we have chosen not to be yoked to them (ECUSA or the Canadian Church) as we prefer to exercise our freedom to remain faithful. We continue to pray, however, that there will be a genuine demonstration of repentance." He has publicly repudiated the unilateralism of the Americans and the Canadians.

Southeast Asian Archbishop Yong Ping Chung further ratcheted up the pain on those provinces that have separated themselves by saying "I am not going to let my pulpit be defiled by people who don't accept the gospel."

Akinola also made it clear at his recent provincial wide synod that a constitutional provision to extend pastoral care and Episcopal oversight to those "of our" people and others who are geographically separated from us but who share our faith convictions through the establishment of Convocations and Chaplaincies outside Nigeria. Other provinces have had such pastoral arrangements notably in Europe, he observed.

When the Primates met at Dromantine, Ireland recently, the orthodox Primates did something they have never done before; they did not participate in a common Eucharist indicating a depth of theological and ecclesiological dysfunctionality hitherto unknown. It is clear that Akinola will never again share a common cup with Griswold and it is doubtful, based on the current state of things, if V. Gene Robinson will be invited to the next Lambeth Conference in 2008.

Perhaps the best indicator of how the future looks was a telling incident in Philadelphia late last year when four orthodox primates, including Akinola swept into the Diocese of Pennsylvania to kickoff the Anglican Relief and Development Fund to aid the poor in the Global South and at a fund-raiser Charles E. Bennison turned up only to find himself shunned with the Primates refusing even to speak to him let alone break bread with him. They would not even acknowledge his presence. They closed themselves off in another part of the building and left Bennison alone. It was a diplomatic and ecclesiastical rejection of the highest order.

ECUSA AND CANADA

So what does all this mean for the orthodox in the two most revisionist provinces in the Anglican Communion?

Last week Bishop V. Gene Robinson, the openly homosexual Bishop of New Hampshire, did a 180-degree turn predicting that schism would happen and the Anglican Communion would split. Six months ago he had different opinion, now he has changed his tune.

This is what he said; "This is at least as much about power and control as it is about theology and Scripture. It's about who's going to be calling the shots, and who's going to be in and who's going to be out."

At a private meeting of some ECUSA bishops made up of 12 liberal and 8 orthodox meeting in Los Angeles at the behest of Los Angeles Bishop J. Jon Bruno several months ago, Robinson said he first sensed what he considers a conservative power grab.

Robinson came to discuss reconciliation, he said, but several opponents had a different goal. "I said 'I'm here to talk about how we can live together.' And three or four of them said: 'I'm not here for reconciliation. I'm here to divvy up the property from this divorce,'" he said.

That's Robinson's spin. VirtueOnline knew then what took place (and agreed to remain silent) and what it was about became clear to both sides, and that is that there were, and are irreconcilable differences on both sides that no amount of good will or diversity talk can reach across. There were no new revelations, just an 'ah ah' moment when the blinders fell from both sets of eyes and the raw naked truth could be seen by all. Frank Griswold's "diverse center" had tanked.

Robinson's spin that this was about a power play was naturally repudiated by Pittsburgh Bishop Robert Duncan who heads the Anglican Communion Network. He argued "this is not a power play except in the sense that Bishop Robinson's position in the church is a total innovation in the life of the church and what we face are two positions that can't be put together."

Sodomy and heterosexuality can never be reconciled and the orthodox have been saying that from the beginning. Reconciliation without repentance is a non starter. Homosexual behavior is contrary to the will and Word of God. "The crisis can only be resolved by uniting around common beliefs," Duncan said.

But property issues still remain a center stage issue, and to that degree Robinson put his finger on the pulse of the problem for the Episcopal Church. It is not Holy Scripture that binds us together or the 39 Articles or the Book of (Un)Common Prayer, but the Dennis Canon and a phony collegiality that has now been blown to pieces.

Robinson believes schism is inevitable but he wouldn't or couldn't say what that looked like. Does it mean that Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold and his majority of revisionist bishops would renounce the Dennis Canon and allow parishes to leave willy nilly for new and cleaner orthodox pastures? Not a prayer.

A case in point is the very Bishop of Los Angeles J. Jon Bruno who called the meeting to which both Robinson and Duncan were invited, but who is fighting tooth and nail for the three parishes who want to leave his grip from actually doing so. (One has been successful in leaving to come under a Uganda bishop even managing to collect $81,000 from the diocese for legal fees.) But Bruno is appealing this.

Clearly schism means never being allowed to keep your property. Bruno and Robinson both know that Presentments will never work as the revisionists are running the church and will deep six any attempts at bringing one of their own to heel.

So what would schism look like for Robinson? Clearly it means nothing more or less than the orthodox simply up and leaving the property, endowments, crucifix and check book and then telling them they can go pound sand in someone else's ecclesiastical sand box.

But not everyone is in agreement with that idea especially many orthodox who feel they have the right to their properties, especially as many have several generations of family members who have poured considerable, time, effort and money into building and maintaining the property and would roll over in their precious graveyards if they could see what was happening.

On the other hand dozens of priests have walked away from their properties, taking the vast majority of parishioners with them and starting over again, arguing that by staying they damage their own souls and those of the faithful. The AMIA is a living witness to that truth. Other orthodox priests and parishes try to stay under the radar screen of their revisionist bishop hoping he, or she, won't come a calling more than once every three years thus leaving them alone to preach the gospel and grow their churches.

But unless the Dennis Canon is repudiated in every state of the union, and that is not at all guaranteed (a win in California was a loss in Missouri) then it is going to be a state by state dog and pony show with millions of dollars spent on legal fees with lawsuits being driven by the heftiness of Diocesan Trust Funds on the one hand and largely pro bono work by godly attorneys who believe in the cause, on the other.

Schism, if there is one, will come at a very steep price, and only when the money finally runs dry for the revisionists.

But one other thing that needs to be borne in mind as schism is contemplated by all sides and it is this; revisionist dioceses are deep trouble. Their priests and bishops cannot make churches grow and they are sinking financially.

Consider the following. The Diocese of Upper South Carolina run by The Right Rev'd Dorsey F. Henderson is $500,000 in the hole; by contrast the Diocese of South Carolina is in fine shape with money to spare. One is heterodox the other is orthodox. The Diocese of Northwest Texas run by Bishop C. Wallis Ohl is slowly sinking financially while the Diocese of Dallas under Bishop James Stanton is on a roll. The Diocese of Albany under Bishops Dan Herzog and David Bena is flying high with new buildings and more while the Diocese of Central New York under Bishop Gladstone "Skip" Adams is laying off staff because it has diminishing money and even less theology from a man who seems bent on destroying his orthodox remnant.

Consider what happened in the Diocese of Kansas. Rather than face losing a church and its peoples' income, the bishop cut a deal to let the people and priest keep their building - Christ Church at Overland Park - and got a guaranteed income of $100,000 a year for ten years. This is proof that deals can be cut. In the Diocese of Olympia the bishop Vincent W. Warner looked at what was happening in the Diocese of Los Angeles and invited Northern Indiana Bishop Edward S. Little to be DEPO bishop for five of his orthodox parishes. Consistency is not the hobgoblin of small minds, just defective ones.

Similar situations have emerged in New Westminster, BC Canada where the revisionist bishop Michael Ingham set about trying to destroy half a dozen priests only to find that after inhibiting and deposing a number of them, they have emerged bruised, but better and stronger than ever under new ecclesiastical oversight.

So what has been dubbed "the outside strategy" of the AMIA and "the inside strategy" of the Network is now working itself out under the umbrella of Common Cause can only be construed as schism in a very loose sense.

Bishop Duncan has made it abundantly clear that he is not leaving The Episcopal Church as has such Anglo-Catholic bishops as Keith Ackerman (Quincy) and Jack Iker (Ft. Worth) - the latter has appealed to the Archbishop of Canterbury's Panel of Reference for assistance in its dispute with the Episcopal Church over the ordination of women to the priesthood and episcopate. The argument by Bishop Jack Iker is that the 1997 General Convention made the ordination of women priests mandatory in every diocese, while the Anglican Communion seeks to maintain an "open process of reception" on this issue. This will open an old wound that will certainly reverberate around the ECUSA. Win or lose he is still staying.

All this is indicative that the orthodox are not going to be the first to blink, so a stand off seems inevitable, but for how long and to what end? How much pain can people stand? Seven parishes wait on tenterhooks in the Diocese of Florida for Bishop John Howard to lower the boom, and five clergy and six parishes have just sent lawsuits to Bishop Andrew Smith of Connecticut and Frank Griswold, Presiding Bishop.

At the end of the day it might just be the laity who call the shots and not the clergy at all. For the moment most of them are fast asleep, according to an Anglicans United poll, but that situation will not last forever. Each new outrage now gets reported locally and is increasingly being fed by the Internet. That is not going to change.

"Our earnest desire is to see the fabric of our beloved Anglican Communion restored and our bonds of affection renewed through our common commitment to 'God's Word written' (Article 20)," said Archbishop Akinola, but most of us know that is not going to happen, that train has left the station a long time ago.

It may well be that at the end of the day the Anglican Communion will be like a modern dysfunctional Western family where the parents no longer love each other, sleep in separate beds, and to all intents and purposes are separated, but they stay together under the same roof for the sake of the kids and because the personal and financial cost is too great and severe to allow for divorce. So schism, at least for the foreseeable future, is not on the cards.

The Anglican Communion in all its dysfunctionality, waywardness and lostness is broken beyond repair, and its warring bishops who represent 78 million Anglicans and whose make up is mostly black, female and under 30, have decided that shunning one another, refusing to break bread or take Eucharist from one another, is the way to go for the present moment. They will remain part of a loosely knit church called the Anglican Communion, they will be polite to one another and, at the end of the day, let God sort out the sheep from the goats.

--For more stories in this vein visit www.virtueonline.org, the world's most widely read orthodox Anglican Online News Service. VirtueOnline's website has been accessed by more than 7.8 million visitors.

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