He also criticised the different factions in the Church of England who have been warring over homosexuality, describing the fighting parties as “the enemy” because, he said, “that’s what it feels like.”

Dr Williams allowed churchgoers a rare glimpse into his anger and frustration at the way different interest groups have attempted to capture the moral high ground over gay debate during a question and answer session at the Greenbelt Christian arts festivals at Cheltenham racecourse.

The Archbishop, who has been dismayed by the vitriol of the email correspondence being generated said the debate lacked grace and patience and called for a theology of email to be worked out.

In ackowledging the disappointment felt by some since his appointment, he was talking generally. He has said before that, as a bishop, he had to learn how to disappoint people. But it is widely acknowledged that the main area many people, especially the liberal Catholic wing from which he himself emerged, feel let down was in his capitulation to the evangelical lobby over the appointment of Jeffrey John as Bishop of Reading. Dr John, a fellow speaker at the Greenbelt festival, where he was talking on the meaning of miracles, is a celibate gay who was persuaded by Dr Williams to stand down from the Reading appointment because of evangelical protests and fears over church unity.

He has subsequently been appointed Dean of St Albans. Although Dr John was among 15,000 people who took communion at the festival yesterday morning, the two had not met or spoken up until the end of Dr Williams’s session yesterday afternoon.

Dr Williams was being interviewed by Martin Wroe, an ordinand or trainee priest in North London, in front of an audience of 1500. Asked what was the most depressing thing about being Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Williams said: “There is the dispiriting fact, to be honest, of not living up to people’s expectations. We know we never can.” He said this was a personal reflection but admitted: “It impacts on the institution.”

Among the most dispiriting aspects of the job was the tone in which debate was conducted. “It is not so much that we have disagreement in the Church — that happens. It is more to do with the way those disagreements are conducted.” Referring to “the dismissiveness, the rawness of anger” he said: “Somebody some day ought to write a thesis on the spirituality of email because that has something to do with all this. That is what most dispirits me.” Dr Williams continued: “While we may disagree, we have need to learn how to do it with a bit more grace.”

The Archbishop then went on to refer directly to the debate over homosexuality, which culminates this October with the report of his commission into the crisis. He said: “On both sides of the debate as it evolved, quite a lot of people had to learn that the Church of England wasn’t just them because what I heard a lot of, on both sides of the controversy, was ‘we thought the Church of England was us and people like us and maybe one or two others who don’t matter very much’.

“And I was intrigued by the mirror imaging that went on there. There was a sense on both sides, therefore, of shock and dispossession. It’s not full of faithful evangelicals, it’s not full of enlightened liberals. Now have we digested that yet, and what do we do with it when we have. I am not sure I know but that is the kind of work that remains.”

He added: “Very very quickly pressure groups can form and settle and decide where they stand and invest in where they stand. We haven’t had an effective forum in which that process can be slowed, not just for the sake of putting things off but for the sake of mutual understanding. We haven’t found that forum yet. It is not the General Synod, it is certainly not the trading of websites. Where is it? Perhaps where it is or should be is much more at the local rather than the national level.”

Dr Williams was also asked about Christian Muslim relations and in particular whether Muslims can go to Heaven. He said: “Yes, in so far as neither I nor any other Christian controls access to Heaven. It is possible for God’s spirit to cross boundaries. I say this as someone who is quite happy to say that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life and no-one comes to the father except by Jesus. But how God leads people through Jesus to heaven — that can be quite varied I think.”

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