There is a story about William Whitelaw which, in a touching if faintly damning way, sums up the plight of the Church of England. It involves the moment when the Conservative politician was told that, somewhat unexpectedly. Robert Runcie was to be appointed Archbishop of Canterbury. Whitelaw, who had admired Runcie’s military record during the Second World War, was delighted. “Splendid news,” he said. “Fine man, Runcie. I knew him in the Army; very brave, very brave.” He then concluded: “Quite religious too, you know.”

“Quite religious” is an awkward place to be stranded between the more robust stations of militant secularism and theological fanaticism. “Quite religious” is also an accurate description of our contemporary Easter. On Friday, Gerard Baker wrote in these pages that in Japan, where there are not many Christians and an element of confusion is perhaps understandable, it is possible to purchase a Father Christmas nailed to a Cross. Coming soon, a chocolate egg nestling in a Nativity manger?

Anglicans are desperately close to the worst of all worlds. They are perceived as both irrelevant and bitterly divided, especially over homosexuality, which threatens to rip the Church apart at the Lambeth conference next year. It is a moment when leadership at the top — charismatic, intellectual and spiritual — is especially important. Yet leadership is not so much missing as mislocated. Rowan Williams at Canterbury and John Sentamu at York are well qualified to occupy the two most senior portfolios in the Church of England. Unfortunately, they are most well qualified for each other’s positions.

Dr Williams is probably the most intelligent man to sit in St Augustine’s chair for centuries. He is kindly and thoughtful and almost painfully reasonable. His anguish over how to simultaneously hold his Church together and his conscience intact is manifest. He is the personification of the thesis that a liberal is a man so broadminded that he would not take his own side in an argument.

In a different age, when Christianity in Britain did not face the twin challenges of materialism on one side and, as Vincent Nichols, the Roman Catholic Archishop of Birmingham, told The Times on Saturday, a form of guilt by association with intolerant Islam on the other, Dr Williams’s virtues would be of enormous value. Much as the Conservatives were once dismissed as “the stupid party”, Anglicanism has at times appeared like “the stupid religion”. No one could accuse Dr Williams or the faith that he holds of being “stupid”.

The Archishop’s scholarly musings are often mistaken for private doubts and uncertainty. He is not a natural communicator to his wider flock, never mind the unconverted. His instincts on how the Church should manage the question of homosexuality are at odds with the bulk of Anglicans, especially in Africa. In his Easter Day sermon yesterday Dr Williams addressed the traditional theme but chose to illustrate it with reference to political reconciliation in the Solomon Islands. St Paul may have found Christ courtesy of the road to Damascus, but to ask anyone today to do so thanks to the constitution of the Solomon Islands does seem a little optimistic.

The contrast with the Archbishop of York could not be more striking. Dr Sentamu is a clever man but not one with the air of the professor about him. Having come from Uganda via the bishopric of Birmingham, he was not the obvious nominee to be Archbishop of York and his selection was more surprising than that of Dr Runcie to Canterbury some 25 years earlier.

Many worried whether, to put it delicately, the locals would take to him. He has, in fact, been a roaring success. Self-deprecation has helped him considerably. It did him much good, for example, when he declared that he was destined to be an honorary Yorkshireman because his middle name (Mugabe) reads as e-ba-gum in reverse.

Certainty and a degree of showmanship have been his principal assets. Dr Sentamu shows no hint of doubt about what he believes and how he wants to engage others. He started a newspaper column yesterday with the sentence: “Today is a day for noisy celebrations” (I cannot imagine Dr Williams doing noise, somehow). He plainly believes that it would be better for the Church of England to split over the issue of homosexuality than render itself a theological and institutional eunuch by compromising.

The highlight of his Easter Day was the outdoor baptism of 20 adults, not all of them Anglicans, fully submerged in a tank in St Sampson’s Square, York. It does stir the soul rather more than political renewal in the Solomon Islands.

One does not need to be an Anglican, or even especially religious, to want the Church of England to occupy a role in national and international life more substantial than that of the Boy Scout movement.

Easter weekend should also prompt deeper thought than whether or not the weather is warm enough to risk a trip to the coast. Roman Catholicism in Britain has also been through a period of drift since the death of Cardinal Hume, but this matters less because it is the Pope and the Vatican that set its direction. The Church of England may be less hierarchical in structure, but it still has to be steered.

In ideal circumstances, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York would swap mitres. This is not realistic. Yet if Anglicanism is to survive the coming two years and emerge strengthened, then it will need what would amount to a co-archbishopric between its two most prominent figures.

If not, neither of them is going to have much to shout about come 2009.

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