The row over the Church of England’s attitude to homosexuality revives this week, posing another headache for the Archbishop of Canterbury as he tries to reduce the temperature over his remarks about Islamic law.

In a new book, God, Gays and the Church, the Bishop of Winchester, the Right Rev Michael Scott-Joynt, attacks the acceptance of “alternative, revisionist teaching” on the issue of homosexuality.

Bishop Scott-Joynt, referring to a debate on sexuality at the synod last year, claims that there was a “public advocating and vaunting of behaviour contrary to the teaching of the Church of England”. In that debate, priests spoke of the joy and fulfilment they derived from being in openly gay relationships, even though church discipline demands that gay clergy be celibate. The Bishop condemns the fact that personal experience appears to be given the same weight as Scripture, tradition and the Church in the debate over homosexuality.

But as he prepared for today’s opening of the synod, Dr Williams was defiant. Aides said that while taken aback by the strength of the response to his comments on Sharia, he has emerged more determined to raise his Church above the conventions of media spin and bring a new, high-minded form of intellectual debate to the public arena. “He is not cowed at all,” said a source close to the Archbishop. “The best way I can describe his mood is chirpy.”

Multimedia

• Video Q&A with Archbishop of Canterbury about Sharia

• Churchgoers react to Archbishop's comments

• Listen to the Archbishop's speech on Islam

Intellectual arrogance pervades heart of wisdom

Dr Williams was advised before his speech that the content could prove controversial. He should have listened to that advice

BACKGROUND

• St Rowan seeks forgiveness for the sin of ‘unclarity’

• Prime Minister gives his backing to Archbishop

• Archbishop faces critics on day of judgment

• Sympathy and anger as faithful judge leader

• Row over gay clergy threatens to divide Church

BACKGROUND

• John Donne's pulpit

• The Archbishop of Canterbury and Sharia

• My brush with Sharia was swift and fair

• Surprise at sheer fury of attacks on Williams

I've read it so you don't have to

The Archbishop of Canterbury meant well and was quite aware of some of the objections

BACKGROUND

• Adopt Sharia in UK for Muslims, says Archbishop

• Archbishop urged to resign over Sharia row

• Full text of Archbishop's lecture

• From Leyton to Dewsbury, Sharia courts are already settling disputes

The two rows over Sharia and homosexuality will dominate the synod, fuelling anger that Dr Williams’s intervention on Islam was unnecessarily provocative at a time when the Church has enough on its plate.

Attempts will be made to ask emergency questions on Sharia during parliamentary-style questions this evening. During the earlier debate on the agenda, there will also be moves to get a private member’s motion by an evangelical, Paul Eddy, on the “Uniqueness of Christ in multi-faith Britain” debated during this session.

It was not scheduled to be debated until the July synod in York, but a discussion on the place of Christ in a multicultural society would be the ideal arena for concerned synod members to respond to the Archbishop.

Dr Williams has received more than 700 e-mails about his address, nearly all of them critical, but his confidence in his intellectual mission means that he remains unrepentant. Some insiders fear that the damage to the moral authority of the Archbishop’s office is beyond repair, and wonder whether he can recover after his opaque manner of argument exposed the Church to ridicule at home and abroad.

Others defended the use of religious courts to arbitrate in disputes such as marital issues but said they could never challenge the civil law. But the Archbishop had been ill-advised to raise the issue in the way he did. they said. Geoff Hoon, the Chief Whip, told Sunday Live on Sky News: “I’m not sure it was wise of the Archbishop of Canterbury to comment on these rather complicated legal matters.

“It’s important that he should have the opportunity of comment and stimulating a debate; I don’t think we should fault him for that.”

He added: “The Government has been at pains to encourage arbitration, mediation and other ways of resolving matters without the recourse sometimes to expensive legal proceedings.Certainly there is a debate to be had about that but there cannot be any kind of debate about the single authority of our civil legal system, and any confusion about that can only cause problems.”

Kenneth Clarke, the Conservative former Chancellor, said that Dr Williams was one of the most unworldly men he had ever met.

He added: “This is a secular country and we have one law which applies to every citizen all the way down from the monarch to the merest sort of tramp.

“It is applied quite impartially to everybody regardless of their own personal religious beliefs. People can, of their own volition, decide to go off and have arbitration, as I would describe it, of their disputes, particularly in things like divorce and matrimonial affairs by going to a religious court. But that’s always with an override to the civil courts. We cannot have a parallel system of law.”

He said of the Archbishop: “He’s just one of the most unworldly men I have ever met, together with being one of the most intelligent and plainly one of the most saintly, and he has got himself into an absolutely classic British row and has angered a lot of people because they have all been persuaded that he has been talking about bringing back the stoning of women for various moral offences and so on, which plainly he is just about the last person on Earth to contemplate.”

Mr Hoon also backed calls for a review of the high numbers of birth defects among children from marriages between first cousins in Britain’s Asian communities. He said that there was a “particular problem” that needed expert analysis after a fellow minister claimed that the issue was not being addressed.

Phil Woolas, the Environment Minister, said that while health workers were well aware of the heightened risk of genetic problems, cultural sensitivities made the issue difficult to raise.

He said: “Part of the risk, I am told by the health service, is first-cousin marriages. If you are supportive of the Asian community, then you have a duty to raise this issue.”

Defending his colleague, Mr Hoon told Sunday Live: “I am confident that what he has said will have been said with sensitivity and with proper regard to his Muslim constituents and Muslims right across the United Kingdom.”

The call was backed by Ann Cryer, the Labour MP for Keighley, who first raised the issue more than two years ago after research showed that British Pakistanis were 13 times more likely than the general population to have children with recessive disorders.

Three senior judges are to rule on the legality of an arranged marriage conducted over the telephone from Britain involving a man with learning difficulties, in a case with implications for British Muslims (Frances Gibb writes).

Lord Justice Thorpe, Lord Justice Hall and Lady Justice Hallett have been asked by the man’s family to reject a ruling that the telephone marriage of the 26-year-old British Muslim to a woman in Bangladesh was unlawful. The marriage was arranged by the man’s father and deemed lawful under Sharia. But concerns were raised by Westminster City Council as the groom could not give consent because of his learning disabilities.

Mr Justice Wood, sitting in the High Court, ruled that the marriage in this case was not valid under English law. He said that, although the British policy was to recognise Sharia marriages conducted abroad, there were occasions when they could not be recognised in England, for example where to do so would be “repugnant to public policy”.