These ructions came to the fore last week when Archbishop of Sydney Glenn Davies emphatically told those agitating for change to "please leave" the church rather than "ruin" it by betraying God's word. He has since clarified that his remarks were directed at clergy, not people in the pews. Davies made the comments in a firebrand presidential address to the diocese's 51st synod - essentially a parliament held across three sessions over three years. They are big, open and democratic functions with about 500 voting members. This year it was held at an underground lecture theatre at the Wesley Conference Centre on Pitt Street in Sydney's CBD. Late into Wednesday night, the synod debated a motion encouraging the diocese's standing committee to defer its annual payment to the national church, forecast to be $566,000 next year. This would not be ruinous to the church but it was meant as a symbol of the anger in the Sydney diocese, and possibly a precursor to a formal split. The motion was moved by Laurie Scandrett, the former long-serving chief executive of the Sydney Anglican Schools Corporation, and James Flavin, chair of Anglican National Super. They looked directly to Davies' earlier speech for support, specifically his call to arms on same-sex marriage when he said "the time has come to take action and make decisions". Flavin says the motion was not about encouraging a split. "I believe the national church is better together and this motion was to find a way that we could work together to make it clear that we were concerned about some of the steps being taken in other places," he tells The Sun-Herald. He agrees with Davies the church is at a "crisis point" and says "we need people of goodwill to work through this together".

Passions ran high during the debate, with some speakers talking as if a split was preferable or inevitable. Others cautioned against haste. Michelle England, a barrister, said: "It is time for a shot across the bows - that is needed - but it is not time to blow up the ship." Loading Karin Sowada, an archaeologist and former Democrats senator, raised the possibility that depriving the national church of funds could impact its capacity to pay its dues under the National Redress Scheme arising from the child sexual abuse royal commission. Davies later said this was "highly unlikely". The synod ultimately supported the motion as amended by Sowada, which called for the diocese administrators to seek legal advice about deferring funds, and report back next year. In a rare secret ballot, members voted 353 in favour and 87 against. Davies says the outcome is "hardly alarmist" compared to the "more flamboyant" original proposal. Nonetheless, he says his fellow Anglicans with a "revisionist agenda" should be on notice. He warns that "if the national church is going to go off and in an errant direction, contrary to the doctrine of our church", it should expect consequences.

The archbishops are fighting for control of a dwindling flock. The number of Australians identifying as Anglican has steady declined since World War II. In 1947, 39 per cent of the country was Anglican, by 2016 it was just 13.3 per cent. There were 580,000 Anglicans in Greater Sydney and 340,000 in Greater Melbourne. Tim Whitehead, 46, was involved in Baptist and Anglican churches, as well as Church of Christ, all his life until he quit altogether in January. He says the "homophobia" and an unpleasant interaction with one of his local pastors eventually put him over the edge. "I just can't be part of an organisation that is so rules-based that it excludes anyone who doesn't fit the exact mould," the Melbourne father-of-two says. Unlike Davies, Whitehead believes there should be room for disagreement about the text of the Bible. He was left exasperated by the dogmatic approach of some clergy. "I don't think they're deliberately evil," he says. "The thing about the Bible is you can probably find support for anything if you look hard enough and you cherry-pick enough, and that's what I think the church has done on this issue." Ostensibly, the Anglican church in Australia occupies a broad middle ground on these issues. It is not as vehemently conservative as, say, Islam, or as centrally-controlled as the Catholic church. But it is not as progressive as the Uniting Church, whose adherents tweeted about welcoming queer Anglicans if they wanted to leave following Davies' speech last week. The Sydney diocese is an outlier. For decades it has been a hardline conservative bastion, pre-dating the arrival of Peter Jensen as archbishop in 2001. In 2011, during Jensen's reign, leading Melbourne-based Anglican scholar Muriel Porter described the Sydney diocese as "a threat to global Anglicanism" that far outweighed its size and importance.

Sydney is aligned to GAFCON - the Global Anglican Future Conference - a movement Jensen helped found in 2008. Essentially it is a movement of Anglicans fighting to keep the strictest interpretation of scriptures and the most conservative doctrine. Reverend Andrew Sempell of St James' Church. Credit:Jonathan Carroll Homosexuality was at the heart of GAFCON's genesis. One of the key triggers was the 2003 consecration of a non-celibate gay man, Gene Robinson, as a bishop in the Episcopal Church of the United States. GAFCON's founding statement complained the global communion was preaching a "false gospel" which "promotes a variety of sexual preferences and immoral behaviour as a universal human right". Jensen went on to become general secretary of GAFCON, a role he relinquished this year. The threat of a split in the Anglican church in Australia last week in many ways echoes the fears of a split that surfaced when Jensen first helped create GAFCON in 2008. Journalist and author David Marr, writing then in this newspaper, said the church faced "a modern Great Schism". Davies says he is not trying to force a historic split as he nears his retirement in July. But his language has been seen by some observers - including one of his own clergymen, Reverend Andrew Sempell of St James' Church - as laying the groundwork for a future split.

"We are not leaving, we are staying. If others want to leave, that's up to them. We became members of this church knowing what it stood for," Davies tells The Sun-Herald. That kind of characterisation may be crucial in a future legal battle. As Jensen told Marr in 2008, the diocese would not be able to take its portfolio of valuable Sydney property with it in a divorce from the national church. Across about 270 parishes, as well as its schools and aged care homes, the Sydney diocese is likely to have more than $5 billion in property assets. Davies' detractors claim he is laying the foundations for a legal argument that says it's the national church which has split by abandoning the doctrine. "That is what is being provoked here," Sempell says. "[They want to argue] they should be allowed to leave, take all their property with them and start a parallel Anglican church". Recent events have upped the stakes. The Wangaratta diocese, led by Bishop John Parkes, voted to bless same-sex relationships. It was a long-running objective for Parkes. Anglican Primate Philip Freier, the senior archbishop and figurative head of the church in Australia, referred the decision to the church's internal appellate tribunal and his Melbourne synod passed a motion on Friday night expressing "sorrow" at Wangaratta's move.