The Anglican Communion is itself a fiction: the figure endlessly bandied about, that it represents 80m Christians, depends on counting as a member everyone who has been baptised in the Church of England, whether or not they have ever again set foot in a church. If it were only counting churchgoers, the figure would be about 25m smaller. Then you would have to decide how reliable the figures for Nigerian church membership are - about as reliable as any of the other figures in emails from Nigeria, would be my guess.

But let us charitably assume there are 40 or 50 million Anglicans in the world. The next point is that none of them feel bound by any decisions they do not agree with. Nor do they share any recognisable theology. They don't agree what a priest is: about a quarter have women priests and even some bishops; about half don't believe that women priests are possible. The Archdiocese of Sydney doesn't believe in priests of any sort, merely in fundamentalist leaders.

All these divides exist within constituent churches, as well as between them. Thus, Sandy Millar, the leader of the powerful and influential Evangelical faction based around Holy Trinity Brompton in London, has had himself made a missionary bishop by the homophobic Church of Uganda, rather than the Church of England; elements of TEC, the American Anglican Church, are still bitterly opposed to the ordination of women, as is a rather larger group in the Church of England. The Bishop of Fulham, for example, does not consider that he is in communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury because Dr Williams has ordained women priests.

What holds the national churches together is quite simply money, and to a lesser extent prestige. The pension fund trumps theology every time. And that explains the curious dance just completed in New Orleans .

The American church split years ago in spirit. But the majority, liberal faction is also extremely rich, and the problem for the minority conservatives - as in other divorces - is how to leave and take the money with them. The answer would be to have an American court declare that the real Anglicans are those in communion with Canterbury and in compliance with Anglican doctrine. So, for the last nine years, the two sides have been doing the dance of "after you, Claude" - the liberals talking a lot about inclusiveness while trying to provoke their enemies to leave; the conservatives trying to get the Archbishop to throw the liberals out.

It looks, after New Orleans, as if the liberals have the upper hand . The conservatives will flounce out, but without a case they can hope to win in the American courts. But this is not, as Giles Fraser thinks, a triumph of expediency over justice. It's not even, primarily, a scapegoating of gay people. If only it were so principled. It is just a decision to lie about their beliefs for the sake of their pensions - the sort of thing which, when you come down to it, unites almost every Anglican, and even quite a lot of unbelievers.

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