Here’s an article from the Fort Worth Weekly that has an account of the way the tensions in the Anglican Communion and the Episcopal Church are playing themselves out in the Diocese and metro region of Fort Worth:

Link: FWWeekly: Feature: Wednesday, May 02, 2007.

In North Texas, the drama is playing out in many sanctuaries, as divisions within the church threaten to shatter the brittle mosaic that is modern Anglicanism. In one Tarrant County church a few years ago, the pastor walked on the Episcopal Church flag. A vicar west of Fort Worth claimed — wrongly, as it turned out — that vandalism in his church was retaliation for his rejection of “biblical revisionists.” In the Episcopal Diocese of Dallas, a Plano church has left the Episcopal Church entirely. And Fort Worth’s bishop has declared that some actions of the national church are null and void in his diocese.

Fort Worth has become a poster diocese for the issues that have plagued the whole church. There are no women or openly homosexual priests within the diocese as a result of the conservative leadership — some would say tyranny — of Bishop Jack Iker. A polarizing figure to Fort Worth Episcopalians, he has aligned himself with other dissidents within the church, steering the diocese toward a separation and legal battles over property rights. He’s also aligning the Fort Worth diocese, or at least some of its churches, with a portion of the worldwide church led by a gay-hating Nigerian cleric. Individual churches are already deciding whether to stay in the American church or possibly break away with Iker, if he tries to take the diocese out of the national church — a move that may be made as early as this fall.