The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, said yesterday that the Anglican Church was viewed as “a Church obsessed with sex”.

Dr Williams, spelling out some home truths about the effect in the public sphere of his Church’s tormented debates about homosexuality, pleaded once more for unity. Asking what had happened to the art of persuasion, he said: “It is intolerable that injustice and bigotry are tolerated by the Church. It is intolerable that souls are put in peril by doubtful teaching.”

Delivering his presidential address to the Church of England’s annual February meeting of the General Synod in Westminster, Dr Williams said that it would be folly to think that schism would create a “neat and morally satisfying break” between liberals and traditionalists.

Dr Williams, who returned last week from a difficult five-day meeting of the primates of the worldwide Communion in Tanzania, said that the Church’s archbishops were keen for the gay debate not to become a “life and death issue” for the Church.

He added: “The public perception, as we’ve been reminded by commentators, is that we are a Church obsessed with sex.” Archbishop Gregory Vena-bles, of the Southern Cone, one of the primates present at the meeting last week, told The Times yesterday that he considered it unlikely the Episcopal Church in the US could agree.

He predicted that the Church would break up into a “two-tier Communion”, divided between those who described themselves as Episcopalians and those who described themselves as Anglicans.

Tomorrow the Synod is due to debate motions from both liberals and traditionalists over their approach to gays.