Picture the scene in Canterbury Cathedral a few weeks hence. It is the morning of Sunday 19 July, and the opening service of the 1998 Lambeth Conference is just beginning.

The cathedral is hushed, the atmosphere reverent. But behind the scenes there'll be some fervent prayers that the Anglican Church will at least get through this one service without major embarrassment, even if disaster is bound to loom some time before the bishops depart for home.

The Lambeth Conference is held once every ten years. It brings together all the bishops of the Anglican Communion, the worldwide fellowship of faith numbering nearly 70 million people, and united in believing (more or less) the doctrines of the Church of England.

It was that Church's missionaries who established the 37 other churches of the Communion. They are now independent. And the host of the meeting, Dr George Carey, the Archbishop of Canterbury, will be honoured as the Communion's head - but he will have no more actual power than any other bishop.

This will be the 13th Lambeth Conference (not that Anglicans are superstitious enough to be bothered). It will be the first Conference with women bishops present. They will be from several overseas churches, but not from the Church of England itself.

It has not yet been agreed that women can become bishops. The Church is still trying to come to terms with its 1992 decision to allow them to be priests.

What ought to happen

The conference organisers have done their homework. The whole three weeks are taken up with prayer, Bible studies, services, and with discussions in four study sections. The over-arching theme, they tell you, is Islam, the one topic that will come up in all four sections.

"But it won't just be negative", said one. "It won't just dwell on problems between Muslims and Christians. In many countries there are very positive things going on between them".

Baroness Chalker hosting talks on aid

Another main theme is the poor countries' immense debt burden, and the campaign to have their unpayable debts cancelled to mark the Millennium. One day there will be a meeting at Lambeth Palace in London, co-hosted by Dr Carey and by Baroness Chalker, the Overseas Development Minister in the last Conservative Government, bringing together a small group of bishops with senior people from banks and other international financial institutions.

The painstaking preparations even include an elaborate programme for the bishops' spouses, featuring tuition in embroidery and - less predictably - aircraft maintenance, arranged for episcopal couples from remote areas.

But despite all the careful preparations, it is possible that things may come quite dramatically unstuck.

No go for women bishops

Among the bishops who gather in Canterbury will be some who believe that women should not - or, as they would say, theologically cannot - become bishops. A few of them feel so strongly that they're likely to refuse to attend services conducted by a woman bishop.

Rather than risk them staying away from the entire Conference, the Church has gone a long way to accommodate them. It has set aside a church a short distance from Canterbury - St Michael's, Harbledown - where the protesting male bishops will be able to hold their own all-male services.

Archbishop Carey will ask these 'traditionalist' bishops not to meet at the same time as the official Conference services. But the message will still be plain -- the bishops cannot agree that women belong at the highest level of the Church's ministry.

Gay debate

Even more divisive than the argument over women is the debate about homosexuality. Some Christians believe that homosexual behaviour is condemned by the Bible, and that a practising gay or lesbian person therefore has no place in church at all.

Others say that being homosexual is determined by nature, and that it's therefore irrelevant. The Conference could conceivably split apart over the issue. A bishop from each side - the traditionalist Peter Lee, from South Africa, and the ultra-liberal John Spong, from the US - have produced a paper, with Dr Carey's backing, which they hope will keep the bishops united.

They spell out what they think everyone agrees on - that homosexual people should be treated fairly, that marriage is sacred, and that 'predatory' sexual activity is wrong. But on several key points all they manage to do, essentially, is to agree to disagree - the ordination of homosexual priests, for example, and the authority of the Bible.

That is a disagreement that could cause huge problems for the Church. If it doesn't know how to treat its sacred texts, it's heading for very deep trouble indeed.

Spong and Lee say they hope the conference will "refer for further study" the points where they think no agreement is possible. Perhaps it will. But bishops are supposed, above almost everything, to work for and to embody the unity of the Church.

The bishops who meet in Canterbury will have some very deep chasms to bridge.