HOWZAT

But disappointment has been felt more widely by liberals in the Church, who had assumed that he would be on their side in the arguments over homosexuality. Personally he shares their views, and his appointment last summer of the gay (but celibate) Jeffrey John as Bishop of Reading seemed to confirm their expectations. Then Williams lost his nerve in the face of intense opposition to the appointment and asked John to withdraw. The Archbishop — visibly struggling again — said he felt obliged to separate his personal stance from the position he believes he has to hold as head of the Anglican Communion. And judging by what he said on the subject in this interview, liberals may have to gird themselves for more disappointment to come. Williams is clearly not going to force conservatives in the Church simply to accept gay bishops and blessings of gay relationships in America and Britain.

For a start, he is notably sympathetic to the predicament of the Church in Africa, working in a culture that sees homosexuality as corrupt and degenerate. Anglicans there have themselves been cast as corrupt, particularly by Muslims, because of their sister churches’ actions in the West.

Does that mean, then, that the Anglican Communion will always have to move at the pace of its slowest member? “It’s never just done that. For the Communion as a whole, where it wants to move on this issue is still formally an open question, I think. You can’t assume it will go one way. Let’s take, say, the ordination of women. Actions in certain provinces brought others along.”

But as soon as that possibility is raised, he casts doubt on it. “For whatever reason, though, that wasn’t seen by many people as a matter affecting the authority of the Bible in quite the way this is. Nor did it have quite the same cultural intensity that this seems to have."

So does that mean the “alternative oversight” model, which has allowed parishes that oppose women priests to have their own flying bishop, couldn’t simply be modified to apply to the gay issue too? “I don’t know at the moment. I really don’t know. The American Church is trying to find its way on this at the moment. We’ll learn something from that.”

Another possibility, which could allow liberal churches in the West more freedom, is what is known as a Lutheran federation, a much looser structure than the current Communion. Williams concedes that this “has practical attractions. The question is whether it’s cutting the Gordian knot. Trying to be in communion . . . is a big investment in being together, and it’s a high-risk one. I think it’s worth trying that high-risk enterprise because it seems to me to go a bit closer to the heart of the New Testament than just a slightly shoulder-shrugging coexistence.” So is unity more important than anything else? “You mean more important than truth?” he asks. That’s exactly what I mean.

“People sometimes talk a little bit easily about sacrificing unity to truth or truth to unity. I suppose Christians are supposed to believe that unity has something to do with truth, that the work of holding together is itself a converting and transforming thing. To try to work for the sake of unity is not to say, ‘Anything for a quiet life’, because it isn’t in the least quiet. In fact, it’s a recipe for what can be quite a tension-ridden and difficult relation. But I do feel that federation, loose parallel processes, are less than we’ve got, less than we could have and, in the very long run, less than what God wants in the Church.” It might be better, however, than a complete split? “It might be. We’ll see. But what I’m really trying to set out is what I think the priority has to be, the desired priority in terms of unity.”

If unity is the priority, then, who will have to be sacrificed? Will it be gay believers and priests and would-be bishops, and their supporters? Quite probably. “Whatever solution we come to is going to cost somebody and it has been said that the interesting moral decisions are not about whether anyone gets hurt but who gets hurt, which is a very painful thing. Very. And whatever shape the unity takes, there’s going to be cost.”

I point out that it is he who is going to have to decide who gets hurt, and he agrees. “I’m going to have a very large role in doing it, yes.” More struggle and pain ahead, I fear.

When Williams was appointed, he spoke about the need for the Church to capture the imagination of the culture. Isn’t that hard to do when, on this matter at least, the Church has become so counter-cultural? To wider British society, the Church seems rather old-fashioned in its inability to resolve an issue that most people outside have already come to terms with.

“Whether something is old-fashioned or not doesn’t resolve the question of whether it’s true or not,” he retorts. “I can see the temptation of simply thinking, ‘Well, there’s a cultural mainstream which flows neatly in one direction. You just align with it’. And that really won’t do.”

Yet the cultural mainstream is right now in the process of deciding to allow gay couples, through civil partnerships, more or less the same rights as married ones. So what will happen when the first of his (many) gay priests decides to enter into a civil partnership? “Oh,” says the Archbishop, with a groan. “Pass!” He laughs. A pause follows. “Hmmmm . . . ” is the best elucidation he can offer after that. It’s bound to happen, though, isn ’t it? “Bound to happen,” he concurs.