Tom Butler: Today's Bishop is a gay divorcee. We may not like it but is it worth a schism?

Openly homosexual divorcees living with their partners are not generally made bishops. Canon Gene Robinson scores a dubious first with his consecration today in the US Diocese of New Hampshire. His election by his diocese caused consternation throughout the Anglican communion. The Archbishop of Canterbury convened a meeting of the archbishops of the 38 provinces making up the communion. Nobody walked out but there was no overall agreement. What will happen now remains to be seen. But how it has happened, what can be done, and why it matters, merit some explanation.

The churches of the Anglican communion grew from the activity of Church of England missionary societies, largely in the 19th and 20th centuries. Each had its particular ecclesiastical flavour, each its particular geographical area. As a result, for example, the Church in Nigeria and East Africa tends to be predominantly evangelical, whereas in South Africa liberal Catholicism predominates.

Those global divisions come from antecedent strands in the Church of England. This church for centuries has encompassed the gamut of belief, from Calvinistic Puritanism stressing salvation by faith alone to Anglican Catholicism emphasising the beauty of holiness in the richness of worship. History handed it these strong ecclesiastical "tribes", each giving special authority to one aspect of the Christian faith, each providing a path to God, each needing the others to keep it from declining into heresy.

Characterising the "tribes" has never been easy. In today's terms, conservative evangelicals make the authority of the Bible paramount, while liberal Catholics prize the authority of truth found through God-given reason. The "high" or "Catholic" churchgoer finds the presence of Christ in the Holy Communion, and the one who says "put me down as C of E" treasures the practice and worship of the Church as it has been known since Cranmer. No one "tribe" would utterly deny the validity of the others' views but some subjects prompt fierce discussion on the extent of that validity. Examples include slavery. Clearly sanctioned by the Bible (St Paul advises a runaway slave to go home and his master to receive him back as a brother Christian), south London evangelicals nevertheless campaigned for its obliteration. Interest on loans offers another example. Homosexuality is a third.

Homosexuality is rarely mentioned in the Bible, but active homosexual practice receives condemnation in the Old Testament and by St Paul. For conservative evangelicals, then, the position is absolutely clear: to accept the practice of homosexuality is to disobey clear biblical teaching and a church that ordains practising homosexuals is disobedient to its divine calling. Such disobedience is a scandal which weakens the church's mission.

Others point out that the Bible condemns the homosexual practice associated with the cultic activity around pagan temples. It knew nothing at all about the loving, stable, permanent same-sex relationships that are a feature of modern life in the West. Indeed, some would argue that these relationships are closer to what the Bible honours as marriage than the serial marriages that have also become a feature of modern life. For liberals, then, the matter is equally clear. As modern society understands a great deal more about the human condition today, to discriminate against homosexuals is wrong and misguided. It is an affront to human rights. It makes the Church a scandal to those in society at large and weakens its mission.

Christians who interpret the Bible in these different ways are not disobedient to its teaching, but the difference has become a line in the sand that conservative evangelicals and modern liberals have drawn and along which others are ranged. To cross it seems to be to cross something absolutely fundamental in the meaning of faith. To ignore it seems impossible.

The differences are not only those of biblical interpretation. Allowing the expression of the religious life of England's people is a hard task for the nation's church in a multi-faith society; how much harder it is to reach agreement in a world Church that crosses so many cultures. Practices that are in the cultural past for many Christians are not so for other faith communities. Yesterday, the Right Rev Mano Rumalshah was due to be enthroned as Bishop of Peshawar in the North West Frontier Province in Pakistan. Last week, he said that the decision to consecrate a homosexual bishop was having a devastating effect on Christians whose faith was a national minority. "This," he said, "would be seen as a sticker on my forehead with 'Shame' written on it. It would be seen as yet another proof of the falseness and bankruptcy of the Christian faith."

What can be done to prevent Anglicans of such opposing views falling out is not easy to say. The Anglican communion has no central authority, no commonly held canon law. Primates' meetings, the Lambeth Conference, even the Archbishop of Canterbury, have only admonitory or advisory authority. The communion is a commonwealth, not a monarchy. Like the British Commonwealth, its sanction is expulsion; only an archbishop of Canterbury can decide who is in communion with him and who is not, who is in and who is out. But it's worth noting that Christians have long maintained faith and unity while deploring their leaders.

The Bishop of Peshawar's words offer one reason why it matters that we hold together. People of good will, Christians and others, will lament the advance of a dispute that worsens human existence on our lovely, terrible planet. Here, the Church of England is to be found in the most deprived estates and isolated villages. Around the globe the Anglican tradition is to be thoroughly involved in community development as part of its life of worship and service. In South Africa, to take but one example, the Anglican church was in the forefront of the fight against apartheid, and today is battling HIV/Aids. The churches, thanks to that missionary past, have the networks of local contact that enable them to work for the betterment of the lot of millions. This co-operation in the service of humanity is not to be lightly forsaken.

There is another reason too. The purpose of religion is to show humanity the way to union with God. So fragmentation is always a falling short of our human calling. And if it happens? Then we must remember that sometimes only the pain of division teaches us how sweet was our association. If we can remember it before our ways part, then thanks be to God.

The Right Rev Tom Butler is Bishop of Southwark