Needless to say, the election of Bishop Robinson met with a mixed response in the 77 million-member Anglican Communion. Liberals around the world hailed his election as an important step forward in the full inclusion of gays in the life of the church.

Conservatives were not so sanguine. While they admitted that there were prohibitions in the Bible that had never been or were no longer binding on Christians, they did not think that the traditional ban on gay sex was among them.

Anglican churches in Africa, parts of South America and Asia, numbering 55 million Anglicans, were particularly adamant in their opposition to gay ordination. The archbishops of Rwanda and Uganda even assumed emergency oversight of conservative Episcopal churches in America (often without the permission and against the opposition of American bishops). The archbishop of Nigeria supported these extraordinary measures and promised to found new American parishes of his own.

Faced with a mounting crisis, the Anglican Communion attempted to find a way to resolve the increasingly bitter conflict in Anglicanism. The Lambeth Commission, appointed by Dr. Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, and chaired by the veteran Irish archbishop, Robin Eames, produced in 2004 a wide-ranging document entitled the Windsor Report, a blueprint for peace that offered several concrete suggestions.

The report recommended, among other things, that liberals declare a temporary moratorium on gay ordination and the blessing of same-sex unions. It simultaneously urged conservative African archbishops to cease interfering in the internal workings of the Episcopal Church in violation of canon law. After careful study and reflection, the suggestions were mainly honored in the breach.

At the present time, the leading candidate to replace William Swing as the bishop of San Francisco is the Rev. Bonnie Perry, pastor of All Saints Episcopal Church in Chicago She has lived for 18 years in a committed lesbian relationship with Susan Harlow, a minister of the United Church of Christ. If Perry is elected and confirmed by a vote of the general convention in Columbus, there will be no doubt in anyone's mind that the Episcopal Church is irreversibly committed to elevating gay and lesbian candidates to the office of bishop.

At which point the Anglican Communion is very likely to come unglued. While some way may still be found for liberals and conservatives to continue to live in the same ecclesiastical house, the chances are good that the aggrieved parties will divorce and go their separate ways. If so, the division in the Anglican Communion would be the largest split in western Christendom since the Reformation of the 16th century.

Although the argument in Anglicanism centers on matters of principle, the atmosphere in which it has been conducted has been toxic from the start. Liberals and conservatives have all too often been eager to believe the worst about each other. They have frequently parodied and mocked each other's deeply held convictions, shown scant respect for consciences that differ from their own, and even attempted to impose unacceptable solutions from the top down on unwilling parishioners.

Which means that good will is currently in short supply in the Episcopal Church. However, nothing irrevocable has as yet happened. The Episcopal Church and the African bishops may still agree at the last moment to abide by the terms of the Windsor Report.

But if nothing changes and the present course is maintained, the Anglican civil war over human sexuality will inevitably have the unhappy ending no one really wants.

So while it is still too early for despair over the future of the Anglican Communion (hopelessness is, after all, a mortal sin), it is much too late for optimism.

--David C. Steinmetz is the Amos Ragan Kearns Professor of the History of Christianity at the Divinity School of Duke University in Durham, N.C. He wrote this commentary for the Orlando Sentinel.