New York ? Following a meeting that was keenly important but not decisive, leaders of the churches that make up the Anglican Communion will be working for at least the next three years to see if they can avoid a permanent split over homosexuality.

The course of the global Communion will be set at various meetings from this month through the 2008 Lambeth Conference, a once-in-a-decade gathering of all the world’s Anglican and Episcopal bishops.

At issue is the consecration of an openly gay bishop in the Episcopal Church, the U.S. branch of Anglicanism, and endorsement of same-sex relationships within both the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada. Most of the world’s Anglican bishops hold fast to traditional Christian teaching that gay sex is sinful.

Leaders, or primates, of the Anglican denominations have now agreed to “slow down a bit” in working through their differences, said Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold, head of the U.S. Episcopal Church. “Let’s make room for one another. Let us reason together.”

A tense summit meeting on gay issues last week in Newry, Northern Ireland, ended with 35 primates professing continued unity and avoiding an open split in the 77-million-member Communion. Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams said that much was a “small miracle.”

“We were right on the edge of a breakup of the Communion,” said Canada’s primate, Archbishop Andrew Hutchison.

His Canadian church is targeted because the Vancouver diocese authorizes same-sex blessings and its national General Synod has affirmed the “sanctity of committed adult same sex relationships.” The Episcopal Church has seven dioceses that approve same-sex blessings and provoked a global firestorm by consecrating Anglicanism’s first openly gay bishop, Gene Robinson.

Things were so tense at Newry, Hutchison said, that a dozen or more primates wouldn’t receive Holy Communion alongside Griswold, who led Robinson’s consecration rite.

Griswold, however, joined in the primates’ unanimous reaffirmation of a 1998 Lambeth Conference stance “rejecting homosexual practice as incompatible with Scripture.”

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, spiritual leader of the world's Anglicans, pauses during a press conference at a retreat center in Newry, Northern Ireland, on Feb. 25. Anglican leaders met for a tense summit on gay issues.

The primates’ statement also requested three key things from the U.S. and Canadian denominations:

• That their bishops halt public blessings for same-sex couples and consecrate no future “bishop living in a sexual relationship outside Christian marriage.” The U.S. bishops will address that during a closed-door meeting starting next week at Navasota, Texas, and Canadian leaders may discuss the request at a May meeting.
• That both denominations “voluntarily withdraw” their delegates from the international Anglican Consultative Council at least until the 2008 Lambeth Conference. The council meets every two or three years to discuss church issues; next in Nottingham, England, in June. In May, the Canadians will gather and decide on whether to honor the request to stay away, followed by U.S. executives.
• That they send representatives to a hearing at Nottingham to explain the thinking behind their actions on homosexuality as part of further study on the issue. That will be no problem.

Archbishop Williams, meanwhile, was asked “as a matter of urgency” to form a panel to supervise special pastoral provisions for parishes that cannot work with their bishops because they disagree about homosexuality.