The diversity of the Anglican Church makes it hard to keep together

There's a massive showdown happening this week in London's Lambeth Palace, and it's got nothing to do with the latest shenanigans of the royal family.

Lambeth Palace is the residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and so worried is Dr Rowan Williams that the worldwide Anglican Communion will split that he called the primates, as the senior archbishops of the 38 provinces are known (no jokes, please), to Lambeth Palace this week for an extraordinary meeting.

It's not just another storm in the parish teacup. This is a real and present danger, triggered by last month's resolution of the major US Episcopalian synod meeting, the General Convention, to endorse the consecration of an openly gay man as bishop and recognise same-sex unions.

Many primates in the African provinces are threatening to withdraw their churches from the international body, because they are horrified by the decision, which goes against everything they believe the church has always taught.

The Anglican Communion is very different from the Roman Catholic Church where, in theory, the Pope has total authority.

Although the Archbishop of Canterbury, like the Pope, is regarded as primus inter pares, or first among equals, unlike the Pope, his authority is purely symbolic and the mother church, the Church of England, cannot force its opinions on the rest of the Anglican Communion any more than the US province or the Australian province can, because each province is autonomous.

So is this the end of civilisation as we know it? If some of the provinces in the developing world form breakaway churches, what will happen to the cosy congregations so familiar to us from Songs of Praise on ABC television, or the petty squabbles of the parish of Dibley over which Dawn French presided with such hilarity?

The sobering realisation for Anglicans in the Western world is that they are no longer the representative people of the worldwide church, which numbers 77 million. Of the 38 provinces, only nine are from countries with predominantly white populations.

There are 11 African provinces, eight from the Asia-Pacific region, four in South America, and the rest from the Indian subcontinent, and their membership is growing steadily, unlike the declining membership in Western countries. This means the current face of Anglicanism is statistically more likely to be yellow or black than white.

Post-colonialism is as much a force in religious as it is in state matters, and the John Patersons and Peter Carnleys among the primates are outnumbered by the Martin de Jesus Baharonas and the Emmanuel Musaba Kolinis.

The issue, as often is the case, is a clash between progressives and conservatives in the church. But the current debate about homosexuality has greater potential to cause a permanent split than did proposed changes to Cranmer's Book of Common Prayer, which caused such an uproar in the 1960s, or even the ordination of women clergy in the 1980s.

Even within the provinces, individual bishops and dioceses cannot agree. The unwavering stance of Archbishop Peter Jensen of Sydney is diametrically opposed to that of Australian primate and Archbishop of Perth, Peter Carnley, and the Sydney diocese already is threatening to break from the Australian church.

This column is not the place to canvass the rights and wrongs of homosexual behaviour, for the issue has been high on religious agendas for many months. Another very real question is whether it is a matter of theology or culture.

Each Anglican parish, diocese or province throughout the world develops its own kinds of rituals, customs and interpretation of scripture – and even within Brisbane, say, there is a great gulf between solemn high mass at All Saints' Wickham Terrace and the more informal worship style of the charismatic parishes.

Evensong at St George's Cathedral in Jerusalem may not be very different from the same service in the cathedrals of St John in Brisbane or St Mary the Virgin in Lincoln but go to Anglican parish churches in many non-Western countries and you will find yourself in unfamiliar territory.

Customs and beliefs differ as much as services do. I once had a loud discussion with the bishop of Mt Kenya East at the 1988 Lambeth Conference, after a talk he gave defending his church's practice of clitorectomy (female circumcision) on the grounds that it wasn't specifically forbidden in scripture.

When I suggested that such a criterion would also allow polygamy, death by stoning and the banning of pork and shellfish in the diet, he got very angry and pulled rank, and we ended up not the best of friends.

The big question for the Anglican Communion is how far should one side be prepared to compromise, and over what issues – should liberals always give way to conservatives for the sake of harmony and solidarity?

In the diverse world of Anglicanism, where belief and worship styles are dictated as much by cultural values as by biblical principles (Hooker's famous "three-legged stool" of scripture, tradition and reason), is it purely a numbers game?

Should the more progressive principles of Western Christianity be forced to give way to the culturally based conservatism of some of the developing countries out of post-colonial guilt?

It's a grave problem for the church, for it has practical as well as ethical implications, and if the new Archbishop of Canterbury is to lead the other primates to a compromise, he'll need even greater wisdom than Solomon's about the danger of splitting the baby in two.