The meeting, convened by the conservative American Anglican Council, will attract some 2,500 priests, bishops and laity who oppose the church's decision to approve the Rev. V. Gene Robinson as bishop-elect of New Hampshire.
The Dallas meeting will help set the stage for an emergency summit in London of Anglican leaders the following week (Oct. 15-16) to discuss the fallout from Robinson's election and the decision by a Canadian diocese to allow the blessings of same-sex unions.
"There is a growing number of people all around the country who say the Episcopal Church has taken a giant leap in a new direction, and we're not going with them," said the Rev. David Roseberry, rector of Christ Church Episcopal in Plano, Texas, who will co-host the meeting.
The Episcopal Church is the U.S. branch of the 77-million-member Anglican Communion. The 38 autonomous churches in the communion are led by Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams.
Organizers say they will ask Williams and Anglican leaders -- called primates -- to install new leadership in America, at least for those churches and dioceses that opposed Robinson's election.
That could result in two overlapping U.S. churches, one recognized by Williams, and one that is not. Another proposal would be to give conservative U.S. bishops the authority to minister to likeminded churches in other dioceses.
The Rev. David Anderson, president of the AAC, said Williams needs to decide which side is the "legitimate Anglican franchise" in the United States.
"What we don't want is for the primates to say, `Well, let's wait until their next convention (in 2006) and see if they do more bad things,' or `We'll be watching you over the next three years, behave yourself,"' Anderson said. "We need severe sanctions."
Traditionalists are also upset by a vote at the church's General Convention in August to "recognize" -- but not authorize -- that some bishops perform same-sex unions as part of the church's "common life."
The conservative-leaning dioceses of Central Florida, Fort Worth, Texas, Pittsburgh and Albany, N.Y., recently met to condemn both decisions. Pittsburgh took the most drastic action by voting to cut off funds to the national church.
"It's really come to a divorce," Anderson said. "And we're looking at how we divide the property and who gets the kids."
While Anderson predicts a strong rebuke from the London meeting, it is unclear whether one is even possible. The Rev. Ian Douglas, an Anglican expert at Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Mass., said the primates' meetings are not "an exercise in democracy."
Two years ago, when the primates of the Bahamas and Argentina proposed a system to discipline rogue provinces, the primates rejected it as a threat to each church's own authority and autonomy.
"It's not like a version of `Survivor' where a church can be voted off the island," Douglas said. "Rather, it's how are we going to live into that communion, which is a gift from God."
The church's top prelate, Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold, is trying desperately to hold both sides together. Three weeks ago, he invited five bishops from both sides to discuss the divisions.
Griswold, who voted to confirm Robinson and will not attend the Dallas meeting, said one limb of the "Body of Christ" cannot choose to separate itself from another.
"I can think of nothing more limiting of the ever-unfolding truth of Christ than a monochromatic church reduced to only one point of view," he said in an interview.
Other bishops have pleaded for the conservatives to stay within the church.
"We have differences on capital punishment, on war and peace, on abortion, the ordination of women ... across a whole range of spiritual, theological and moral issues," said Bishop Mark Sisk of New York. "I don't understand why this one is a communion-breaking issue."
