BRITAIN:Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams has admitted he fears losing control of the Anglican church in an escalating row over gay clergy.
Dr Williams, the spiritual leader of the world's 77 million Anglicans, is battling to conciliate warring factions in a church on the brink of schism.
"Because I am an ordinary sinful human being, I fear the situation slipping out of my control," Dr Williams said in an ITV documentary about Canterbury cathedral, mother church of the Anglican communion.
"I fear schism, not because I think it's the worst thing in the world but because, at this particular juncture, it is going to be bad for us. It's going to drive people into recrimination and bitterness," he said.
The Anglicans, a loose federation of 38 national churches around the world, have struggled since 2003 to hold together their liberal minority and conservative majority - mostly in Africa - which opposed the naming of the openly gay Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire.
US bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, the first woman to head the 2.4 million-member US Episcopal church, has been under fire from conservatives because of her defence of same-sex unions and support for Bishop Robinson's consecration.
Dr Williams, who is to chair a crucial meeting of Anglican leaders in Tanzania next month where Bishop Jefferts Schori could have a chance to confront her fiercest critics, painted a bleak picture of the church's future.
"We can't take it for granted that the Anglican communion will go on as it always has been," he said. He conceded this would be painful and unsettling. "There is no way of moving on without asking the hard questions."
Dr Williams faces a strong challenge at the Tanzania meeting, where traditionalist African bishops have threatened not to sit at the same table as Bishop Jefferts Schori.
Dr Williams had tried to quell the flames of a slow-burning schism by proposing a two-tier membership that would effectively exclude the US church for consecrating a gay bishop.