At the height of a debate over homosexuality that threatens to split the Anglican Church in two, Rowan Williams has sanctioned the reissuing of a six-year-old essay that challenges traditional biblical interpretations.

Evangelicals gave a warning last night that schism now seemed inevitable, in view of Dr Williams’s attack on the key texts used against homosexuals by conservatives at such a sensitive time for the Church.

Dr Williams was asked in February by the publishers SCM-Canterbury Press if he wished to make any amendments to his essay, first published in 1997 in the run-up to the Lambeth Conference the next year. He gave his assent for publication that same month, when the sexuality debate was reaching its height in Canada and America, although before the abortive selection of Dr Jeffrey John as Bishop of Reading.

He argues that there is more to homosexuality than Romans i, the passage most frequently cited by evangelicals where St Paul attacks the “unseemly” passions of men with men.

Dr Williams goes on to set out a possible case for active same-sex relationships by arguing that revisionists who support “sexual expression” for homosexuals may, like evangelicals, be trying to be faithful to the Bible.

His arguments, couched in diplomatic theology, make clear his support for committed gay partnerships and his belief that the Church’s traditional ban on homosexual activity should not apply to those in faithful gay relationships.

The book of essays, The Way Forward, will be published at the end of this month and comes at a time when the Anglican Church faces schism over the appointment of its first openly gay bishop.

Dr Williams says that there are plenty of homosexual Christians who do not recognise themselves in Romans i, where St Paul condemns a society where “God gave them up unto vile affections”, where women turned to lesbian love and “the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burnt in their lust one toward another”.

Dr Williams says that if Romans i is to be read as being about the phenomena of homosexual behaviour in general, as it is by many evangelicals, then “homosexual desire is not only intrinsically disordered, but intrinsically rapacious in a way that other kinds of desire are not”.

By contrast, many Christian homosexuals want to live in obedience to God and “struggle against the many inducements to live in promiscuous rapacity — not without cost”.

Dr Williams speculates that such a homosexual would say: “It is hard to hear good news from the Church if it insists that my condition is in itself spiritually compromised.”

He says: “If the Church is to give constant encouragement in following Christ, even to those who do not settle for either celibacy or marriage because of their orientation, can it really and honestly do so without at least admitting that an account of homosexual identity dominated by Romans i cannot be the whole story?"

He also says: "Of course lives may be and some lives apparently must be lived without sexual expression in the usual sense of the term. But if you do not accept that homosexual desire is itself a mark of disorder, can you confidently say that the presence of this desire must always be a sign that sexual expression is ruled out?"

Dr Williams's essay will confirm the fears of evangelicals that the Western Church is headed irrevocably down a sexually liberal road that they cannot accept. It will also strengthen the hand of the evangelical Archbishops of the fast-growing African and Asian Churches when the 38 primates of the Anglican Communion meet in London in October.

They are expected to demand some kind of censure against the American Church or the diocese of New Hampshire, which elected Canon Gene Robinson. Dr Williams's essay stands alongside an equally powerful contribution from his friend Jeffrey John, who was forced to stand down as the next Bishop of Reading after objections from evangelicals to his sexual orientation.

Dr John argues the case for sexually active gay relationships and says openness on the issue is part of the "Christian responsibility to deal with the truth". He challenges the "natural law argument" that homosexuality is disordered.

Dr John, who is continuing to work as canon theologian of Southwark Cathedral, says homosexuality clearly does not fit the generally observed order of nature because bodies of the same sex do not fit together in the same way as a male and a female.

But he continues: "Homosexual behaviour is common to many classes of animals, so at least one form of the natural-law argument - that because animals do not engage in homosexual behaviour neither should humans - is clearly wrong."

He says that civilisation itself depends on people disobeying many instincts and urges which might be termed "natural".

He adds: "Even if one were to accept the description of a homosexual orientation as a 'disorder' or 'handicap', those who suffer from other forms of disorder or handicap are not normally condemned for adapting a using the gifts and capacities they still possess in the most creative way possible."

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