Rob Blackhurst

A much shortened and edited version of this piece appeared in the FT on the 21 November 2009

Every morning at around seven the Archbishop of Canterbury leaves his sparse living quarters at Lambeth Palace and heads down to the even sparser crypt chapel, completed in 1220, to pray. Here, with candles burning and the first rays of autumn daylight penetrating through the latticed windows, the Primate of All England kneels before the altar, head bowed, for half an hour of silent prayer. He is dressed in simple parish priest black with his Greek orthodox proportioned beard the only arresting feature. Eventually one of the two nuns living at the Palace, kneeling beside him, breaks the silence by reading a passage of scripture – the daily offices of the Church of England – and matins begins.

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The Archbishop then joins her in reading the Psalms in unison in his beautifully modulated bass voice – with only the faintest trace of his upbringing in the Welsh Valleys – a voice so full of gravitas that during his teenage years he was cast as God in an undergraduate production. Like all Archbishops since the birth of his troubled church, he prays for the Queen "Church and the World". And he reads out prayers by name for those who have written to him – sick babies, ill members of staff, and those with terminal illnesses. He also prays for the Ministry of Priests in his Canterbury diocese. As well as running the affairs of the 70 million strong Worldwide Anglican Church, he is also Kent's bishop – who spends most of his Sundays preaching in Kent's parish churches.

Perhaps because of his Welshness, Williams has none of the familiar daintiness of the comic Anglican Priest. He prays very physically – bent over – as if spiritually is welling within – and it's not hard to imagine him in one of the monastic orders that he considered joining well into his twenties. As he bows before the altar at the end of prayer, and turns on his heels down a darkened corridor towards another day in the office, he seems exotic – more like a Russian or Catholic priest than the kind of urbane Anglican bishops that have filled this role before.

I've embedded myself for a week at Lambeth Palace to find out what the Most Reverend and Right Honourable Rowan Williams does all day. My visit came just before the Catholic Church's guerilla raid on English souls – and my aim was to see whether the Primate of All England, First Baron and Senior Member of the House of Lords is anything more than a decorative part of English life. Does applying the Holy Oil that anoints our Head of State and leading the Lords Spiritual translate into any real power and influence?

Williams's tenure at Lambeth starkly divides opinion. Traditionalists – including much of the Conservative commentariat – argue that he is not muscular enough in his condemnations of sin; backs Leftish causes like the environment and poverty at the expense of talking about God; prostates himself before other faiths to the extent that he wants to introduce Sharia Law into the UK and pitches his speech at such a high level that it is almost impenetrable to humble souls. Perhaps worst of all, he recently tried to call a halt to the bloodlust against MPs at the height of the expenses scandal. They contrast his academic urge to hedge, with the clear moral leadership given by the John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York, who cuts up his dog-collar live on television to protest against Robert Mugabe; and parachutes out of planes to raise funds for injured veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Liberals – and other moderate Conservatives who like Williams because of his intellectual pedigree – argue that in Williams they have a priest of rare warmth, humility, and spirituality who has the intellectual gifts to win the respect of a public that is losing touch with organized religion. He seems intellectually fearless: prepared to argue publicly with famous atheists like Dawkins on the existence of God; appears at the Hay Literary Festival talking about his book on Dostoevsky (written during an X month sabbatical last year); holds readings of his own poetry in Waterstones and submit himself to an interrogation by Jeremy Paxman on the moral lessons of the credit crunch. And he ranges over the field of public policy too – writing about the sexualisation of children; the narrowness of the primary school curriculum; and the role of the media in trivializing the complex. With regular slots on the opinion pages of newspapers (all written by himself rather than ghosted) he sometimes seems more like Intellectual-in-Chief than Archbishop. He perfectly fills the vague job description of Archbishop set out by former Foreign Secretary Lord Hurd: "The Archbishop helps to supply the feeling that most people have that there's an extra element that should be there"

The first of his engagements that I see is one of the biggest of his six years as Archbishop – and a well-flagged potential banana-skin – is his service of commemoration for the War Dead in Iraq. He will be keenly aware of the flak directed at Archbishop Robert Runcie – from Margaret Thatcher down – when at the service of thanksgiving after the Falklands War he called a halt to the jingoism and asked the congregation to pray for the Argentinian war dead. Runcie was a decorated former Tank Commander in the Scots Guards. With 2,000 of 100,000 personnel who served in Iraq under the dome of St Paul's - including many parents of the bereaved - it was going to be a difficult balancing act for this signed up member of the Peace Movement and critic of the Iraq War to talk, without hypocrisy, about the achievements of British troops there while acknowledging the failures – and to carry the audience with him.

With a national mood about Iraq than the Falklands, there is a somberness to the sea of men in Khaki, RAF Blue and Navy Blue; the upper echelons of the military in red sashes and gold epaulettes, weighed down by a chestful of gold medals; and the mothers, wives and girlfriends in their floral wedding hats. As the organ at full pelt subsides, there is almost a Jacobean moment of drama as the Archbishop addresses the political class grouped together on the front row – Brown, Cameron, and a sun-tanned Blair who stares intently at the Archbishop throughout his sermon.

The tight circle of connections at the top of the public life adds to the tension: Williams knows each of these men well, meets them regularly, and is effectively their parish priest. Now comes the reckoning. He concede that "Many people of my generation and younger doubted whether we should ever again see a conflict with a standing army with conventional weapons" and, in a barb directed at Blair's Downing Street: "There is a time to let go of the satisfying over-blown language that is so tempting for human beings when war is in the air". But he managed to pay tribute to the troops for their "patient and consistent" work in "chaotic war ravaged Iraq" that was "one of the most heavy responsibilities laid on soldiers anywhere". High above St Paul's in the Press Gallery the men from the mid-market tabloids are muttering that that the Archbishop is supposed to be delivering a sermon and not a political speech. The next morning the Sun denounces the Archbishop's "rant" but otherwise the reaction is muted. It seems that his combination of fearless and sensitivity has worked. As the groups of soldiers spill out into the crisp autumn day, and the motorcades and outriders transport the political leaders back to their world of earthly power, the Archbishop startles some onlookers by flinging off cassock by the pews handing them to his chaplain, and dashing out of a side door.

A recent news item told of how the mother church of Anglicanism, Canterbury Cathedral, is being held together with duct tape, because of a shortage of money to carry out urgent repairs. The internal marble pillars are crumbling and the whole building has been judged in "serious jeopardy". It would be tempting to see this as a metaphor for the House of Anglicanism.

But, on the ground, it seems that when the Archbishop appears, the pews fill up. On a torrential night in October, I went to see him bless a new icon of the resurrection painted by an Italian nun at the up-market City Church of St Andrews just beneath Holborn viaduct. It is a Wren Church – closed on Sundays due to an arcane piece of church law – where Blake and Dickens worshipped and Handel played the Organ. During the week it predominantly services City Workers – including some of the Bankers from whom the Archbishop had recently demanded repentance. Like many Anglican churches, it has had the flexibility to reinvent itself for a less devout world. After the suicide of a stressed city-worker on the church's doorstep they now run a counseling during the week, hold lunchtime lectures and recitals with famous speakers, and lend their church to a breakaway Russian Orthodox Church at Weekends.

The priest, a friend of Williams from Oxford, has a Lloyd Grossman Bostonian accent, a theatrical manner and shares the Prelate's taste for High Catholic Ritual. As this is a High Day, Williams is dressed up in full garb for the service ("I've got my overalls on") he tells me – and swings a thurible that releases clouds of incense towards the church's gold-leaf roof. The billowing clouds artfully dramatic – the work, the priest tells me afterwards, of a West End lighting director. The crowd is well heeled, middle-aged, and probably not inclined to share the Arch Bishop's views on bankers. But as they receive their communion wafers (swine flu has temporarily removed the cup) from him many bow, curtsy and one even kisses his amethyst ring .Afterwards, over mozzarella canapés and Burgundy, many queue up to petition him about everything from an impenetrable dispute involving the Russian Orthodox Church to asking him, next time he is in Ely, to bypass the Cathedral and go to their parish church instead. He leans forward when he speaks as childhood meningitis left him deaf in one ear - but he dispatches all with warmth and makes a beeline for those who are standing on the sidelines.

The next day I go to Lambeth Palace to follow the Archbishop's day – a meeting with Anglican Mission Agencies, a meeting of Christian and Muslim teenagers and twenty-somethings to discuss climate change, some print and radio interviews, and a drinks reception for the great-and-good with an collection of guests ranging from Conservative historian Andrew Roberts to Melvyn Bragg, Zac Goldsmith, Joan Bakewell and Will Self. A sense of mystery is nurtured by the need for visitors to Lambeth have to knock on a tiny fifteenth century door to be let in by a gatekeeper. If the Church of England wanted to hire the place out for filming (despite requests, they refuse) then it could be an alternative, human-scale Hogwarts: all turrets, unexpected doors, and clashing architectural styles– Tudor red brick towers, eighteen-century sandstone buildings, and a still flourishing fig-tree that was planted in the fifteenth century. It feels like an oasis in the middle of the brutalist concrete office blocks of Vauxhall. Behind the palace – passed the row of cottages where the Archbishop's driver, two nuns, and his chaplains live, is London's largest secret garden with patches of herbs and organic vegetables, a tree-seat with a cross carved in it, a Grecian temple, and, left-over from when the Archbishops children were younger: a trampoline and climbing frame in the corner.

Inside, the atmosphere is more crepuscular. Dusty rooms with names like Cardinal Morton's Audience Chamber are filled to the ceiling with bound documents – only reachable by long wooden ladders- that could give Dan Brown reams of material. In one of these alcoves off the main chapel, Thomas Cranmer wrote the Book of Common Prayer. Inside archivists are cleaning fifteenth century documents by dipping them in water. The Lambeth Collection has Bibles dating from the eighth century – only a few centuries after Augustan came on a mission from Rome and managed to covert Ethelberg, the King of East Kent, to Christianity. The corridors are lined with previous archbishops – those from the eighteenth century indistinguishable in their ruffs and wigs – up to Runcie, Carey and Williams. The are a collection of pikes on the wall – a reminder of an age where the church was an alternative power-base to Westminster – and the Archbishop was in such peril that he had to be protected by a personal military. Lambeth only has a small staff - a press office, a series of advisors on development, ecumenical affairs, and inter-religious affairs and West-Wing style Chief of Staff (Williams is a fan of the series). But it retains remains more a household than a modern workplace - with most staff attending a monthly Eucharist led by the Archbishop – and stopping for tea and scones at four. The ambience is part liberal NGO, part Senior Common Room, and part National Trust Property.

This morning Williams is chairing a meeting of the Anglican mission agencies – with archaic names like the Mission to Seafarers - that operate in Africa and there is much talk of "migrating to a new vision" "mission" and strategy" – with power-point style handouts that, business speak-style, spell focused with two Ss. There are discussions of problems with pensions arrangements as some of these organizations merge and ways of getting the church to cut through bureaucracy. "Schedule it for half three in the General Synod on a Thursday afternoon" quips the Archbishop. This kind of managerialism isn't William's natural mode of speech but he concludes with a philosophical observation: "The sheer double-edged quality of globalization is destructive and creative. We need to monitor the destructive and encourage the creative".

Later in the day, he's chairing a meeting of young Christians and Muslims who are drafting their own version of December's Copenhagen Agreement. Today, among the hijabs, the silk kurta's and the smart-suits of the Christian's there is much earnest motherhood and apple-pie sentiments voiced about the common ground between faiths. But Williams is enthused by the subject matter – mixing Christianity "the wackiest idea of all is repentance" with a learned discussion of the need for a carbon tax. Earlier in the week I had seen him deliver. The Operation Noah lecture on climate change to a packed audience in Southwark Cathedral - the youngest crowd that must have been in Southwark Cathedral for decades. His was a Deep Green message against unchecked economic growth – arguing that consumption is morally damaging: "human soul is one of the foremost casualties of environmental degradation" because it has "distorted our sense of who and what we are". Environmentalism is one of the causes that irritate his critics –he's taken it seriously: replacing all of Lambeth's incandescent light-bulbs, driving a hybrid Honda Civic, having a virtually flight-free year in 2008. He's planning to travel to the Copenhagen summit by train to deliver their message.

So how does his message go down with young people here? "Often the Archbishop says things that people of faith should be engaging with" says one immaculately groomed Catholic teenager who has been made a "Faith Fellow" by Tony Blair's "Faith Foundation "He seems to be consistently speaking out for justice. He speaks out against poverty and takes on the big issues that other faith leaders aren't good at engaging with. The Anglican churches willingness to engage is better than my own church". A young Muslim, who has made a point of congratulating him for his remarks on Sharia law, says: "I look up to him because I can see how easily he mobilizes his own faith. We don't have a Muslim equivalent of the Archbishop. In many ways when I look at the Archbishop now I wish we did. I look at him as a moral and spiritual leader – and he does carry more weight because he is part of the institution of Government". But another young Muslim is much more skeptical: "In an establishment sense he is one of the most important people in the country. But in a celebrity sense he is not. This isn't a very Christian society anymore. It ceased to be long ago. He is the most high profile archbishop ever – and yet he is still isn't high profile".

The Archbishop's office is large with the accumulated clutter of a busy mind – precariously balanced piles of theology books stacked on his desks that can't find a home in the overflowing floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. Above a comfy chair there is a large nail with INRI captioned on it – perhaps symbolic of the Archbishop's suffering in the job. His desk has a view stretching out over the endless gardens. I ask if he ever feels the ghosts of previous archbishops when he's looking over these grounds? "There's a bench at the end of the garden. Robert Runcie used to sit there at the end of a hard day and beat his head against the trees. I get more that sense at Canterbury. When I go to Matins I go out of the door that Thomas Beckett went out of and down the cloister that he walked. I walk passed the martyrdom every morning". But it is Michael Ramsay – Archbishop in the sixties and early seventies – another bushy-browed, left wing intellectual with a taste for Eastern orthodox traditions and ruffling politicians, whose photo is on his desk "the hero for my generation".

My interview comes at the end of the week in which Rome had launched its unexpected raiding party on the Anglican Church, offering parishes the opportunity to convert to Rome en mass – if they are dissatisfied with the liberal drift of the Church of England. On the morning of our meeting, the papers are full of talk of a fatal schism in the Church and Williams' humiliation at the hands of the Pope. The Archbishop asks for some water. "I've a bit of a sore throat" he says, "And a sore ego" he adds sardonically.

Just a week ago he had joined the Catholic Archbishop of Westminster Vincent Nichols to celebrate Edwardtide – the canonization of Edward the Confessor – with a joint Evensong sung by the choirs of both Cathedrals. As the fur hoods of the Catholic choir and Cardinal's scarlet mingled with the more restrained Anglican cassocks there was a display of mutual warmth. Nichols even quoted Pope Paul VI looking forward to the Church "embracing its ever beloved sister the Anglican Church in One Communion". At the time, he must have known about the bombshell that was about to land on Williams' desk.

"I did have very short notice about it. I think that was a pity," says Williams in his characteristic half-whisper: " It would have been good to discuss it a bit more. But I don't think it's a deadly blow by any means. There are people who we knew were very likely to be become Roman Catholics if the Church moved ahead with ordaining women as bishops here. These people would have gone anyway. The question is under what conditions. I can't really comment on the scheme itself: it's a highly technical bit of Roman Catholic provision. There are people in the Church of England who are opposed to the ordination of women – particularly women bishops – who would not see it as automatically the right thing to do to become a Roman Catholic. There are quite a few of them and they won't walk out as if this is a simple safety net for them. So it's not going to be the sword to cut the Gordian knot". And does he expect Rome to reclaim en masse Parishes that it lost in the Reformation? "Well I wonder? We didn't see that when we ordained women priests. I think a lot will depend on the provision that is made in the Church of England [for those opposed to the ordination of women Bishops] and how people cope with that. But the 400 000 figure [an estimated figure of the number of Anglicans who will join Rome] is doubly fishy. For one thing, it includes members of the "Traditional Anglican Union" which isn't anyway part of the Anglican Communion. For another thing, there are no reliable statistics".

Is there are chance, as some have suggested, that it will be a blessing in disguise, because it will clear out the traditionalists who have been fuelling disunity on everything from the ordination of Bishops to Gay Priests? Williams is quick to dismiss this: "I don't think it will solve our problems in that sense – precisely because when people aren't Roman Catholics they usually aren't Roman Catholics for a reason. The fact that the Pope says 'we can make it easier for you' doesn't necessarily follow that they will go".

On the war between the traditional and liberal wings of the worldwide Anglican Church he sounds gloomy – pausing for an age before answering: "The Lambeth Conference did a great deal to build relationships and restore some trust around the place through work around development and education and so forth. But I think the decisions of the American conventions this summer did rock that quite a bit. [by announcing that they would consecrate a Gay Bishop]. At the level of international instruments of Communion, I can't see that it's getting any easier – but equally it is not meltdown".

One of his most abiding characteristics has been a refusal to use his pulpit to denounce or condemn the personal morality of an increasingly secular public. In a phrase he has coined, he is keen to avoid the "comic-vicar-to-the-nation" role. He is not interested either in the stratagems of political leadership – forcing a "Clause Four moment" by taking on the traditional wing of his own Church. This, he is aware, feeds media perceptions that he is weak: "People think vicars are silly, ineffectual figures who bumble around the edges of situation comedies. Leadership on my definition is actually enabling change to happen. Because we have a dangerous blurring of the leader and the celebrity in our global culture – people don't always think leadership is being exercised unless noise is being made. And I think they're wrong. I think the question is always what change needs to be delivered? I just live with the perception [of weakness] because it is the kind of culture we live in"

But what about those liberals, like the Gay Bishop Gene Robinson, who feel that the desire to keep the church together is resulting in a protracted period of injustice for Gay people? "Gene Robinson is very clear about what the just and right thing is. The Church is not as clear as he is about that. The axiom I come back to constantly is that if it takes longer to make a decision, that the decision is properly made when you've made it, it's worth waiting for. I'm trying to make sure that the church moves forward in mutual trust. And love". He repeats it, as if startled, "Yes, love".

Instead, he has used the pulpit to explore complicated ideas. His lecture calling for Muslims to be allowed the right to resolve some civil disputes under Sharia law saw a disastrous collision between a Cambridge Professor's style and a tabloid news agenda. Did he take any lessons from that experience: "I don't want to censor the things I can talk about. Hindsight is easy isn't it? Probably the calculation I didn't make is that you are always talking to everyone in this job. And a lecture designed for professional lawyers which on the whole didn't shake them rigid was translated into other terms. So, yes, reality check"

Earlier in the week, I had seen Williams on one of his Constitutional Red Letter Days – opening the new Supreme Court alongside the Queen, the former Poet Laureate Andrew Motion and the Prime Minister. It is one of those high British occasions in which everyone dons fancy dress. Jack Straw was wearing his Black and gold embroidered Lord Chancellor's outfit, a white ruff, and a pair of black tights and a pair of pantomime slippers. The Archbishop had his full "overalls" on. After speeches from Gordon Brown and poetry from Andrew Motion, the Archbishop stepped forward to offer prayers for wisdom for those responsible for "framing, amending, and enacting law" and for "your Servant Elizabeth the Queen and Governor" that she may always "incline towards God's will". As he reads the Prayers the Queen shuts her eyes in silent prayer. What does it feel like to be the First Baron, above the Prime Minister in constitutional importance? "Ninety-nine per cent of the time it is decorative. But once in a while you get this surfacing of the bare constitutional facts that I'm the senior member of the House of Lords. A few years ago we were invited to Windsor when the Lord Chancellor was Derry Irvine. After dinner the Queen summoned Derry and myself as the two Senior Barons to walk with her".

Though the Constitutional facts remain, is the Archbishop the part of the furniture of national life in a way that he once was? In a land where Christianity is disappearing from the warp and weft of national life – quite apart from the two million Muslims, 700,000 Hindus and 350, 000 Sikhs - does anyone listen to the Archbishop anymore? Robert Runcie thought that, back in the eighties, that future Archbishops would struggle to be heard in next generation. "It was a surprise coming into this office that the Archbishop has – almost as a right – a position in preaching at the big national events – the Iraq Service, the commemoration of 7/7, the Royal Wedding Anniversaries and the passing of the First World War generation. There's an absolute take for granted element that you are there – and what you say I think is listened to".

But do the politicians still listen? "Runcie was a bit pessimistic about this in his own day. He though that you couldn't guarantee that an Archbishop would be able to talk to the Cabinet about particular issues. That hasn't happened: conversations still go on over the river. And there isn't a problem of access – not all. If anything, there is a tiny bit more sensitivity because religion has not faded away quietly in the last ten years. I mention this simply because it landed on my desk this morning: the Cambridge Review of Primary Education that is just out. And I was taken aback to see that it opened with a quote from the Archbishop of Canterbury. I say that not to crow but to record the sometimes quite puzzling fact that there is still an audience"

I ask him whether he is concerned that have now lost a shared cultural understanding of the Bible? "Apart from the spiritual question we risk losing our mental map and imaginative map- without Christianity. We lose our capacity to understand the language we speak, the literature we inherit, the music we sing, the buildings we live in. We just lose literacy – and although it's not as serious a matter as losing contact with God – it's pretty serious because it means that something in the soul is dry".

I ask whether he minds the Church being borrowed as a convenient venue for the rites of passage – baptism, weddings and funerals – by people with no faith who wouldn't dream of attending a regular service? "The Church is somewhere people still put emotions that won't go anywhere else. At moments of transition or moments of crisis it is still extraordinary how many people will use the church. One thing most Clergy have experienced is singing solos in crematoriums because nobody wants to sing hymns- we've all been there. Somebody will say can we have Morning has Broken but nobody wants to sing it – so the priest gets up and does a rather embarrassed solo. Should we mind? A lot of me simply says "what if it's a bit humiliating to be used. So what?"

It's a Friday at the end of a punishing week. On days like this, he must yearn to follow the vague family retirement plan of buying a smallholding in West Wales and breeding goats. For him, the first ever Archbishop of Canterbury from Wales, returning to the homeland feels like "putting his slippers on". It was here he developed his faith throughout his teens – not through any great moment of revelation – but through a steadily deepening relationship with "Priests and Ministers who were wonderful to be around". He was brought up in Cardiff, the son of an engineer in the Ministry of Works. Socialism here was the default option and he remains a "self-confessed hairy lefty". "My political instincts have always been on the left- though it was very much to do with the tradition attached to George Orwell and William Morris. In student politics I used to get very impatient with the Trotskyite side of all that because it didn't seem to have anything to do with making a difference. There was a great deal of noise, a great deal of "leadership" going on – and not very much else.

It would have seen laughable then that the gifted boy who attended Park End Presbyterian Chape would end up as Archbishop of Canterbury. And, as amid the hotly fought ecclesiastical battles, he has retained his outsider's eye: "It's very helpful from time to time to remember that the Established Church is slightly absurd. Every institution is – even the Financial Times. When I was quite a young priest I was taking part in a wedding in a Cathedral – very solemn, and I dressed up very splendidly. We were processing and I turned a corner and there were a group of tourists gawping. And I thought, "Goodness me, we must look peculiar". It doesn't mean you don't do it. But it does perhaps mean that you are protected from being too pleased with yourself. You must remember, "Well, this is a bit odd".