A FIVE-POINT plan for peace will be debated by the 38 primates of the Anglican Communion tomorrow in their extraordinary meeting to save the Church from breaking up over the issue of gay clergy.

The set of proposals gaining ground among the leaders of the worldwide Anglican Church would force the Episcopal church in America to retreat or be suspended.

With conservative primates in the ascendancy at the Lambeth Palace meeting called by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, the key question emerging is how much time to give the American Church to repent.

The orthodox primates, led by Greg Venables, Primate of the Southern Cone, and Peter Akinola, Primate of Nigeria, want the American Church to recognise that its decision to elect the gay divorced father of two, Canon Gene Robinson, as Bishop of New Hampshire contravened Anglican orthodoxy.

Some primates will call for immediate action, arguing that the period for repentance is past and that the consecration of Canon Robinson next month is unlikely to be halted.

Liberals, mostly from the West, are pleading for “understanding” from the archbishops from the developing world. They will argue for a period of weeks or months to be given to both America and to the diocese of New Westminster in Canada, which recently authorised a same-sex blessings rite, before any suspension.

Archbishop Venables, whose province takes in large parts of South America, said: “There is no moving forward without what has happened being undone.” However, the Bishop of Worcester, the Right Rev Peter Selby, a leading liberal, pleaded for primates from Africa and the developing world to try to understand the pressures facing the Church in the West, just as western bishops should try to understand the difficulties of the South.

Of the 38 primates, more than 20 are “orthodox” or from the conservative evangelical wing of the Anglican Communion. Most of the evangelicals are from Africa, South America and Asia.

A demand for a “parallel jurisdiction” with a separate province and archbishop transcending national boundaries, drawn up by American conservatives meeting in Texas last week, is now thought unlikely to gain majority support.

Such an outcome would herald a ruinous legal battle over property.

Although they would be able to take their pensions with them, the conservative Anglican clergy in America would have to find more than $3 million (£2 million) just to pay their wages if they tried to start a separate church.

The primates, anxious to avoid schism, are instead likely to back a more moderate plan. Schism will still occur, however, if the conservative primates are not satisfied that biblical orthodoxy has been adequately upheld.

The latest proposal is the brainchild of Dr Philip Giddings, a political scientist who helped to found the evangelical lobby group Anglican Mainstream during the dispute over the appointment of the abstinent gay Canon Jeffrey John as Bishop of Reading.

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