Many of the delegates hope that a year's delay will allow the international Anglican Communion to create a new home for conservative American Episcopalians. The Anglican Communion is an association of independent national churches.

"We're still in the opening act of this play," said Steve Wilensky, a convention delegate from St. John's Episcopal Church in Dallas who said he would have preferred a more definitive disconnection from the denomination.

According to a survey of local church leaders commissioned by Bishop James Stanton and released at the convention, more than half said the denomination had gone seriously wrong, with 42 percent saying it had gone so wrong that they were ready to leave. Almost a third said they want to take the word "Episcopal" from the church signs, letterheads and literature.

Only a quarter of the more than 700 leaders surveyed said that the Episcopal Church had not gone seriously wrong.

'Loyal minority'

But rejection of the national church's position on issues such as ordination of gay priests or blessings for same-sex unions was not universal at the convention at Southfork Ranch.

"There is still a loyal minority within the diocese that needs to be ministered to," Joe Walker of Ascension Church in Dallas told more than 300 delegates.

Based strictly on numbers, the Dallas meeting may not seem significant. Combining a couple of local megachurches would exceed the entire diocese membership of about 37,000. And the national denomination, claiming about 2.4 million members, may now be smaller than the number of Muslims in America.

But the local diocese, which sprawls from Texarkana to Waxahachie, is one of the fastest growing - up 13 percent over the past 25 years, while the denomination shrank by a quarter. And the Episcopal Church remains disproportionately influential in America, experts say.

The issues that rack the relatively small denomination are also playing out in many others.

For Episcopalians, as with several other denominations, the most divisive issues are about how the Bible treats gender and sexuality.

A few Episcopal leaders - including Bishop Jack Iker of Fort Worth, but not Bishop Stanton - object to the ordination of women, approved by the denomination in 1974. Many more, including Bishop Stanton, object to the ordination of openly gay priests and the approval of locally created blessing ceremonies for same-sex unions.

In 2003, the denomination's biennial convention confirmed its first openly gay bishop and agreed to allow local bishops to bless same-sex unions. Four months ago, the denomination elected a new presiding bishop who supported both moves in 2003.

Those votes galvanized the opposition.

Willing to walk away

As many as a third of this weekend's convention delegates, based on voice votes, seemed to be willing to walk away from the denomination now. But Bishop Stanton asked his more conservative churches to stay with the diocese in spite of the national church.

"Separation is never a strategy," he said in a speech. "Those who depart the church are not, I think, fulfilling Christ's call but are fulfilling the expectations the world has about the church, that we cannot really get along," he said.

Bishop Stanton is a leader in the conservative Anglican Communion Network and shares the opinions of many of his conservative members. But he wasn't just making a rhetorical point about unity.

The largest church in the diocese - one of the largest in the denomination - pulled out last month. Christ Church of Plano may be followed by St. Matthias of Dallas, which sent a note but no representatives to the weekend convention.

After the convention, the bishop said his call for church unity would apply to the denomination only if it follows "the teachings of the apostles."

Whether that's happening is what created the rift in the Episcopal Church - and is roiling other denominations including the Methodists, Presbyterians and even the Southern Baptist Convention. In the conservative-led SBC, its leaders are battling over whether a "private prayer language" - commonly known as speaking in tongues - is in accord with the Bible.

Those battles may make the local survey particularly interesting. It's an unusually detailed snapshot taken by a market research company whose owner is a local Episcopalian.

According to the survey, about three-quarters of the local leaders said the national denomination did not reflect their personal convictions or their Christian beliefs. About 70 percent disagreed with the right granted by the national body for the ordination of "people living in homosexual unions" or for local clergy to perform same-sex marriages.

Survey questioned

But some Episcopalians question whether the survey met scientific standards. David Pyke, a member of Good Shepherd Church of Dallas, took the survey. He's also on the steering committee of Via Media, an organization that supports the denomination.

He participated in the online survey and dismissed it Saturday as a "push poll" that started with inflammatory questions.

"It was typical advocacy polling," he said.

But the survey results didn't necessarily indicate that the diocese would split with the denomination, Bishop Stanton said. Even some who oppose national policies are uninterested in leaving, he said.

Leaders at two of the fastest-growing churches in the diocese, one in Frisco and one in McKinney, told the bishop that a split "would represent a distraction," he said. "But they were no less upset [with the denomination] than anyone else in the diocese."

In addition to the online survey, which reached three-quarters of local church leaders, Bishop Stanton met with leaders at 76 of the 77 churches in the diocese in the past four months. What he heard was not so much a call for separation as a request for more time, he said.

Most of those in Dallas who want to separate from the Episcopal Church want to attach themselves directly to the Anglican Communion.

The communion, based in England, claims more than 74 million members in 160 countries. In the United States, the national representative is the Episcopal Church. There is no provision for dissident dioceses or churches to link directly to the communion.

But Anglican leaders, including the presiding Archbishop of Canterbury, have suggested the creation of a two-tier system that could relegate the American church to second-class status. Some American conservatives hope that the communion will also establish a system that would allow them to join directly.

Some Episcopalians who want to leave the denomination hope the new system would allow them to avoid an important legal hurdle. Currently, church property belongs to the diocese and the denomination. That means a congregation that chooses to leave the Episcopal Church usually must find a new place to worship.

If the Anglican Communion recognizes an alternative membership for Americans outside the Episcopal Church, some dissident Episcopalians hope that would allow them to retain their principles without losing their church buildings.

Disengagement

The local convention voted Friday to amend its constitution to create a system to disengage with the national church if it loses its status in the communion. That amendment must be approved again at next year's convention to take effect. And then the convention would need to approve the split by a two-thirds majority.

But Anglican officials will need to take action against the American church to trigger the new procedure.

And maybe that's the message from the Dallas convention, said the Rev. Gregory Crosthwait, rector at Intercession Church in Carrollton - that the local diocese isn't going to take the first step to leave.

"In this convention, we've said 'we're in,' " said Father Crosthwait, a member of the conservative Anglican Communion Network. "Any exit will be led by the Archbishop of Canterbury or the primates of the Anglican Communion and will not be led from the ground up."

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