The factions, which are as divided over the nature and purpose of the Church as over homosexuality, are determined to defend their positions and a formal separation could occur within months.

The Telegraph has learned that the conservatives are refusing to take communion with the liberals and plan to boycott the daily services at the meeting in a potent symbol of their divisions.

They are also plotting to rip up the official agenda when the five-day meeting begins today because they suspect it has been designed to keep confrontation to a minimum.

Officials fear that the liberals could stage a walkout if they feel they are coming under unreasonable pressure from the conservatives.

The uncompromising mood of the conservatives, led by Archbishop Peter Akinola, the Primate of Nigeria, was not eased by the decision of the dean of St Anne's Cathedral in Belfast to invite Bishop Frank Griswold to preach yesterday.

Bishop Griswold, the liberal Primate of the American Episcopal Church that triggered the row by consecrating Anglicanism's first openly gay bishop, has refused to comply with the recommendations of the Windsor report. The report, which Dr Williams sees as the only hope for the worldwide Church, urged the liberal leadership of the American Church to repent for consecrating the Rt Rev Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire in 2003.

It also recommended that the American Church must declare a moratorium on future consecrations of active homosexuals and on the blessing of gay "marriages" to bring it back into line with official Anglican policy. The liberal Canadian Church is also under pressure to comply after the Bishop of New Westminster, the Rt Rev Michael Ingham, officially sanctioned gay blessings.

The Americans have merely apologised for upsetting the vast majority of the Church, rather than for the actions themselves, and Bishop Griswold has indicated that they are unlikely to go much further.

In his sermon yesterday, he used the coded theological language of the Holy Spirit to defend the American decision to act unilaterally. He told the congregation: "We find ourselves overtaken by a compassion, which because it is of the Spirit and not the result of our effort or imagination, knows no bounds and can enfold all persons and all things."

"It is a compassion which, in the words of St Isaac of Syria, embraces not only humankind but the birds and the beasts, the enemies of truth, those who wish to do us harm and, he adds, `even the reptiles,' which may be seen as representing those slithery aspects of our own humanity which we are loath to admit to the company of our `better' selves and therefore often displace on to others as evil."

Bishop Griswold, who presided personally at the consecration of Bishop Robinson, has repeatedly resisted pressure to repent and has "affirmed" the place of active homosexuals in the American Church. He is expected to be pressed to explain why he felt able to sign the unanimously agreed primates' statement in 2003 warning that the consecration would "tear" the Communion but went ahead anyway.

Archbishop Gregory Venables, the Primate of the Southern Cone (South America), told Radio 4's Sunday Programme that the conservatives were united in their desire to defend traditional teaching.

Bishop Griswold told the programme that the best that could come from the meeting was the realisation that the issues that unite the Communion, such as Aids, were greater than the divisions.

END