THE Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, said yesterday that the Church of England had become “infected by sin” because its members had stopped listening to God.

Dr Williams told a conference of 2,000 of the country’s leading evangelical church leaders: “The Reformation’s first principle was that the believer must listen to God.

“Because of our fallen state, our minds shy away from listening; and sin infects our institutions as well as our minds, so that even the Church can become a conspiracy to avoid listening to God.”

The criticism was pointed because it is the evangelicals who have been campaigning to expel the Anglican church in the United States from the worldwide communion over the election of an actively homosexual diocesan bishop.

Dr Williams, who is determined to preserve unity if possible, has called a meeting of the 38 Anglican primates next month and is expected to resist the call to expel the US, even though more than half of the primates will demand it.

In his address to the National Evangelical Anglican Congress in Blackpool, Dr Williams made no direct reference to homosexuality, the issue that is threatening to split the 70-million strong Anglican Communion. His address centred on the two remaining areas on which most Anglicans still agree: the existence of God and of Scripture.

“We are here then, I hope, to listen to God telling us who he is, thinking about the Bible, Cross and mission so that we can hear again what is his nature and his name.

“Only so, as every generation of Christians has recognised, will we discover who we are — created by love, ruined by sin, forgiven and transfigured by suffering and sacrifice and the gift of the Spirit, so that it is given to us to be with Jesus wherever he is.” But any hopes that Dr Williams might have of avoiding schism appeared increasingly forlorn. As he spoke, one group of conservative evangelicals was planning to boycott the opening ceremony to pray in another room while another group was plotting an organisation to represent the more “open” voice of evangelicalism.

The congress is meeting until Monday in Blackpool under the chairmanship of Dr Paul Gardner, the Archdeacon of Exeter, who conceded last night that the congress came at a crucial time for the Anglican Church. “If you have come thinking that all of the differences between us will be swept out of the way over the next four days, you will be disappointed,” he said.

The congress, the council’s fourth and the first for 15 years, has been planned for more than two years. “We dare to hope that we will emerge with a greater degree of unity and understanding,” Dr Gardner said.

While differences would remain, the conference would “model a Christ-like way of handling those differences”.

The Right Rev Wallace Benn, President of the Church of England Evangelical Council and Bishop of Lewes in the Chichester Diocese, said that he would speak to Dr Williams to “encourage” him.

Of the primates’ meeting, he said: “The choice is fairly stark. The renegade provinces will need to be disciplined or otherwise the communion will face quick or slow disintegration.”

Either the American Church should rethink appointing Canon Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire or it should be suspended. Bishop Benn said: “We must stop being an elastic church in which anything goes. We do have boundaries. I would hope Gene Robinson would have the sense to step down.”

But David Virtue, an American evangelical commentator, said that there was “not a prayer” of that happening.

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