DALLAS  What was originally planned as a strategy session for a few hundred leaders mushroomed into a gathering of 2,600 clergy and lay leaders to protest the Episcopal Church's liberal steps regarding homosexuality.
According to The Associated Press, the presence of 45 of the church's 300 bishops underscores the gravity of the situation, as talk of a church split fills the air.
"We have two to three weeks to see the future of the Episcopal Church in America," said the Rev. David Roseberry, whose 4,000-member Christ Church in suburban Plano, Texas, organized the three-day event, which kicked off Oct. 7.
Roseberry was referring to the Dallas meeting and the Oct. 15-16 emergency summit in London for leaders of the international Anglican Communion, of which the Episcopal Church is the U.S. branch.
That session involves the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, leader of the Anglicans, and the 37 other heads of world Anglican branches. Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold of the Episcopal Church is a member of that group and defends the church's recent confirmation of an openly homosexual bishop and its decision to bless same-sex unions.
The Dallas meeting's major action will be a petition to the London summit that's likely to ask the world leaders to provide special bishops for conservatives in the U.S. diocese.
The petition could also repeat an idea asking the London summit to declare traditionalists to be the authentic U.S. branch of Anglicanism, in effect suspending or expelling the Episcopal Church, the news service reported.
