The split at Church of the Good Shepherd is an example of the possible rupture within the Episcopal Church USA, whose 2.4 million members make up about 3 percent of the 77 million members of what is often called the "worldwide Anglican Communion." The Communion is the global network of parishes affiliated with the church of Canterbury in England, the ecclesiastical center of the Anglican world.

According to their conservative critics, the bishops of the Episcopal Church USA are in brazen rebellion of traditional church doctrine and teaching that is more popular in the rest of the Anglican world. Though the current controversy was sparked by the election of an openly gay man, V. Gene Robinson, to be bishop of New Hampshire, there are deeper differences - about values, tradition and orthodoxy - at the core of the debate within the global Anglican church.

On Sunday afternoon, about 100 people settled into the pews at Good Shepherd. Among them were the 14 who voted against leaving the Episcopal Church back in February. By casting a "no" vote, they had cast themselves out of the church building. Along with the 14 were Missouri's Episcopal Bishop, George Wayne Smith, and dozens of other supporters, who came to celebrate a court order returning to them a church building they had always believed was rightly theirs. Now they were back, singing Psalm 146 to the sound of their organ.

"Put not your trust in rulers, nor in any child of earth, for there is no help in them," they sang. "When they breathe their last, they return to earth, and in that day their thoughts perish."

Just two miles away, a crowd of about 200 gathered in a ballroom at the St. Louis Marriott West, festively decorated and set up to look like the inside of a church. Among them were members of the 84 who voted to leave the Episcopal Church USA in February. Since then, the same court order that gave one group of neighbors its church back, forced another to leave the pews of Good Shepherd for the metal, folding chairs of a hotel ballroom.

Two bunches of roses, gifts from a member of St. Stanislaus Kostka Catholic parish, sat on the altar. In a service that lasted 90 minutes, the parishioners prayed hard and hugged each other. A choir and piano accompanied them as they belted out Psalm 24. "Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? And who shall stand in his holy place," they sang. "Those who have clean hands and pure hearts, who do not lift up their souls to what is false."

The St. Louis area is not a particularly Episcopalian place. As of January, there were 14,600 members of the Episcopal Church in the Episcopal diocese of Missouri (which encompasses the eastern half of the state), 9,000 members in St. Louis County and 6,500 members of the Springfield, Ill., diocese (which encompasses the southern part of the state.) By comparison, there are 555,000 Catholics in the St. Louis archdiocese, and 40,000 members of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod in St. Louis County.

Certainly Robinson's election was something Walter and most of his Good Shepherd flock strongly disagreed with but, like the national feeling among conservative Episcopalians toward Robinson's election, it represented only part of the picture.

Even before the February vote, most Good Shepherd parishioners did not feel comfortable with Smith, Missouri's bishop. They felt his understanding of Scripture conflicted with their own, and that he represented a liberal Episcopal theology they reject.

In the days before the February vote, Smith offered to step aside. He told the members of Good Shepherd that if it would keep them in the Episcopal Church USA, they could have a more conservative - but still Episcopal - authority preside over their parish.

But Smith's offer didn't resonate. Four days later, most voted to leave the Episcopal Church USA and follow Walter to the Anglican Mission in America, an arm of the Anglican Province of Rwanda. During the controversy over Robinson's election, some conservative African bishops offered to lend their ecclesiastical authority to American parishes disenchanted with their own liberal-leaning bishops.

Walter, who had since become ordained as a priest in the Rwandan province, and his flock would now be under the authority of Archbishop Emmanuel Musaba Kolini from the Anglican diocese of Kigali. A spokesperson for the Anglican Mission in America said the mission has about 70 parishes across the country and about 15,000 members. He said 60 percent of those churches have been started since the mission's inception in summer 2000.

When Walter and his congregation tried to change Good Shepherd's affiliation from "Episcopal" to "Anglican," the Missouri diocese immediately filed court documents to retain ownership of the church and its property. But it would take St. Louis County Associate Circuit Judge Mary Bruntrager Schroeder nearly eight months to decide the case.

The Sunday after the February vote, Smith called Carie Kennedy, one of the 14 Good Shepherd parishioners who voted against leaving the Episcopal Church. He asked her to try to convene the 14 at her house that Wednesday. Fifty-two people showed up. Through e-mail and phone trees, some parishioners who, in the preceding years had left Good Shepherd because of Walter's conservative style, found out about the Wednesday meeting and came, hoping to hear a plan.

For the 14 who left after the vote, and the dozens of others who had fled before that, the reasons for leaving Good Shepherd that day were matter of fact. "They changed the church to be Anglican," said Audrey Couch of Town and Country, who had been attending the church for 40 years before February. "I was born an Episcopalian, so I had to leave."

What Couch and others heard that night at Kennedy's house was simple - once a month, the group would meet at someone's home. They would pray and they would hope. This would keep them together until the judge's ruling. The Rev. James H. Purdy, rector of nearby St. Peter's parish in Ladue, offered to provide clergy for their services.

At one such meeting over the summer, on Dana St. John's screened-in porch, a dozen people, including the tall, lanky Purdy, squeezed together under a ceiling fan to worship. "(Purdy) had to keep ducking his head because of the fan," said St. John.

At the same time, the group at Good Shepherd was thriving, according to Walter. Over the summer, more families began coming to church, some traveling from as far as Springfield, Ill., 120 miles away. "We were retaining our members and keeping 80 to 90 percent of our visitors each week," Walter said.

In October, an Anglican commission issued a report on the aftermath of the Robinson election. It did little more than slap a variety of wrists. It chastised the Episcopal Church USA for electing Robinson bishop knowing the anger it would cause in the wider Anglican Communion. And it chastised some African Anglican provinces for taking advantage of the controversy in the U.S. The Anglican Mission in America, Good Shepherd's Rwandan authority, was singled out in the report as one such community.

The previous week, Judge Schroeder had quietly ruled in favor of the Missouri diocese in the Good Shepherd case, saying the parishioners' majority vote was insufficient to amend the church's articles of association.

Almost immediately after Schroeder's ruling, Walter and his congregation vacated Good Shepherd, and since the end of October, have been worshipping at the Marriott. "We didn't lose a single family after we left," said Walter. "It's a great lesson for us - a church is people, not buildings."

Walter is unfazed by the hotel's cost of "around $1,000" each week and the prospect of finding another church. "We're not troubled by our money issues," he said. "Our congregation has plenty of financial resources. ... We are a family at peace." He said the parish is looking for existing church buildings or land to buy, and that the congregation is sponsoring several young men in seminary and creating priests for the new province at a rapid rate. The congregation will have Christmas Eve services at the Marriott, but will then move to other temporary facilities at The Lodge Des Peres as they continue to look for a permanent home.

On Sunday, in a sermon based on the gospel of Matthew, Walter, dressed in purple vestments, spoke on the theme of disappointment. "The human condition is such that we are filled with disappointment," he said.

"Sometimes, we have so many disappointments imposed upon us because we live in a fallen world. Sometimes things that should have gone our way didn't because of the hate and envy of another," he said. "In the world's way of thinking, it's crazy, but love and forgiveness are the only antidotes to that disappointment."

A few hours later Bishop Smith, dressed in purple vestments, a white miter and carrying a shepherd's crosier, walked down Good Shepherd's short aisle. The organ blasted music from the choir loft as several clergy members from neighboring Episcopal parishes walked down the aisle in solidarity with Smith.

The small congregation that left the church in March has been worshipping in the building for a month or so, but this was a symbolic day of reclamation for Smith and for the Episcopal Church.

"I needed to do this for myself," said Smith. "But we also all needed to do this, to make it very clear to (the parishioners) that they have our support."

Smith used an image from Isaiah, a crocus sprouting through the ground in the desert, to inform his sermon about hope. "You, here at the Church of the Good Shepherd, have become something of a crocus for the rest of us," he said. "We have known something of the desert, and you are the first sign of hope for us."

But the future of the congregation is murky. They do not have a priest, they are relying on their own voluntary skills to run the parish, and money is scarce.

In the end, the circumstances that dictate where these two congregations worship on Sunday will have little effect on the fact that many of them remain neighbors during the rest of the week.

"There is not a member of this congregation who has any hard feelings toward them," said Beverly Westhorp of Maryland Heights after the Marriott service.

After the Good Shepherd service with Bishop Smith, Audrey Couch expressed similar thoughts. "They're all invited back anytime," she said.

For one parishioner, the court decision in October was literally a matter of life and death. Barbara Braznell buried both her mother and her 11-year-old daughter at Good Shepherd. Her own burial plot and her husband's are awaiting them there, and for Braznell, who is 72, the need to get Good Shepherd back from the Anglican Mission of St. Louis suddenly became urgent when she was diagnosed with cancer.

"I don't have much time left, and I needed to be sure I would be with my mother and my daughter," she said.

Smith's sermon about hope and the difficult road ahead seemed to have hit home, even for a woman with little hope for her own future. "We're going to struggle," Braznell said about her congregation, her neighbors. "But we're going to make it."

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