THE Archbishop of York, Dr David Hope, has cancelled his retirement plans to stay on to help the Archbishop of Canterbury through the Anglican Church’s troubles over homosexuality.

Dr Rowan Williams, who had been in the job for only a few months when the crisis broke, is understood to be grateful to Dr Hope, 63, for his decision: he had hoped to step down six years early, on his 64th birthday next Easter. His plan was to return to full-time parish ministry as a rector or vicar of an Anglo-Catholic parish in the Yorkshire Dales.

Not by nature a committee man, Dr Hope was known to be delighted by the knowledge that the General Synod in July would be his last. Now, even though it means that he must suffer the ordeal of chairing at least two more General Synods at York, he has decided the crisis in Anglicanism is so serious that he must sacrifice his personal wishes for the greater good of the Church.

Dr Hope, a traditionalist, was the brains behind the Act of Synod that introduced “flying bishops” to offer pastoral care to opponents of women priests. It saved the Church of England from schism.

A similar scheme of extended oversight across the Anglican Communion, where conservative or traditional bishops would have pastoral care for opponents of homosexual priests, is one of the options now being considered by church lawyers as a way of helping to resolve the difficulties over homosexual ordinations and same-sex blessings.

The American Anglican Council, the leading conservative evangelical organisation, has met already in the wake of the primates’ meeting last week. According to a statement issued yesterday, the council has begun to draw up plans for extended oversight to be made available to conservative parishes after the ordination of Canon Gene Robinson, the divorced gay bishop at the centre of the dispute.

Dr Williams’s goal is to try to keep the Church from schism and to hold the orthodox, biblical line taken by the 1998 Lambeth Conference.

Dr Hope, who has served as a bishop for 19 years, has won the trust of evangelicals. He was given a warm welcome by conservatives at the recent National Evangelical Anglican Congress in Blackpool.

Friends confirmed that he was planning to delay his retirement for a further two years. It would mean that he would be unlikely to be able to return to full-time parish work because, although Anglican clergy can continue working until they are 70, it would be unusual to start in a post at 66.

A source said: “Following the events of the past six months, the Archbishop of York recognises that Rowan Williams needs as much support as possible, not least at the House of Bishops and the Archbishops’ Council.”

In staying on, Dr Hope is following the precedent set by his predecessor, John Habgood, who stayed on for 2½ years after George Carey succeeded Robert Runcie at Canterbury. His decision also paves the way for the new Bishop of Durham, Dr Tom Wright, to be promoted to York. If Dr Hope went next Easter, it would be considered too early for Dr Wright, a leading evangelical theologian, to move again. The other frontrunners to succeed Dr Hope are the Bishop of Liverpool, the Right Rev James Jones, and the Bishop of Rochester, Dr Michael Nazir-Ali.

Canon Robinson claimed yesterday that the campaign against him was being funded by a handful of conservative donors with a political agenda. In an interview in The Washington Post, Canon Robinson, who is to be consecrated Bishop of New Hampshire a week tomorrow, said: “Of course it worries me that a few extremely conservative individuals, for political reasons of their own, are trying to manipulate the people of the Episcopal Church . . . What I find so sad and alarming is that many of the people who are being manipulated are faithful, wondering, lifelong Episcopalians who are in genuine distress and grief and anger over my election and upcoming consecration.”

• Critics of homosexual clergy and lay people in the Church were described as “un-Anglican” yesterday by the bishop who approved blessings for gay couples. At the Lesbian and Gay Christians Conference, in Manchester, the Right Rev Michael Ingham, Bishop of New Westminster, Canada, said that the movement to expel lesbian and gay clergy and supporters from the Anglican Communion was going against church traditions.

  The bishop said: “Many denominations resolve their disputes by splitting up. Anglicans have tended to look for ways to stay together. That’s why what’s happening with this movement for expulsion is deeply un-Anglican. They run contrary to our tradition of living in mutual respect.”

  He sympathised with the Archbishop of Canterbury in his difficulties in keeping the Church unified by accommodating the liberal and evangelical wings: “Unity is a much deeper concept that uniformity. I think he (Dr Williams) has been faced by attempts to impose a global uniformity.”

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