BRITAIN:The Archbishop of Canterbury spent yesterday pondering demands made by conservatives in the Anglican communion about the direction of the global church.
Rowan Williams, the spiritual leader of the world's 77 million Anglicans, is struggling to avert a split developing over same-sex unions and gay clergy.
The issue overshadows a meeting of primates who each head the 38 self-governing provinces of the global communion. They have gathered in a palm-fringed beach resort close to Dar es Salaam in Tanzania.
Yesterday Bishop Peter Akinola, the primate of Nigeria, handed Dr Williams a letter spelling out the conservatives' position.
The contents have not been made public but it is understood it outlines conditions that would need to be met to keep the Global South - a coalition of conservative churches largely from the developing world - within the Anglican communion.
In particular, they want the Episcopal Church of the US brought into line after sanctioning the consecration of gay bishops.
Primates from Africa, South America and Asia, where Anglicans are growing in strength, also feel they have been sidelined by the western, developed world which has traditionally provided the leaders of the Anglican Communion.
Martyn Minns, a conservative vicar of a parish in Virginia who was recently made a bishop of the Nigerian church by Archbishop Akinola, said the issue was about more than homosexuality.
"It is a question of world view," he said. "Do we seek authority from our own experience and look for justification in scripture or do we seek authority from scripture and then try to marry it to our experience?"
He said that if liberals were unable to recognise the primacy of scripture then the only option left would be an "amicable split".
Hardliners in the orthodox camp want the Episcopal Church expelled. Others are seeking a "two-province" compromise involving a split into separate churches, each with their own archbishops.
Tensions between the two wings have been growing for a decade. The struggle reached a crisis in 2003 when the Episcopal Church consecrated its first openly gay bishop, Gene Robinson of New Hampshire.
That decision prompted a steady stream of conservative congregations in the US to opt out of their local diocese to join flocks led by bishops in Uganda, Nigeria and Rwanda.
The problems increased in 2006 with the election of Katharine Jefferts Schori, who supports ordaining gays and is the first female leader of the American church. Today brings the first potential flashpoint when the primates are due to sit down together for the first time.