Church of England enthrones its 104th leader

Rowan Williams was enthroned as the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury yesterday with all the pomp and ceremony the Church of England could muster – not what many people had been expecting.

There were trumpets and anthems, white surpliced choristers and clerics with red robes and blue capes, princes and patriarchs, seneschals and marshals, cardinals and archbishops and the exotic finery of leaders from the Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish, Muslim, Jain and Sikh faiths.

This was a far cry from the words of Dr Williams when he was appointed, that too many people in the Church were too caught up in pomp and dressing up, which struck him as unchristian. He had clearly tried to tone it down. There was no fanfare after he banged three times with his staff on the great West Door of Canterbury Cathedral and it was opened to reveal him, a lonely-looking figure in yellow robes. And he tried to bring with him something of the modesty of his disestablished Welsh church.

There was a simple setting of one of his own poems for harp and soprano and the pure sound of the choir from the little cathedral where he served as Bishop of Monmouth. His Welsh-woven vestments were plain, as was his oak staff.

Yet there was all the circumstance and ceremonial that revealed the compromises Canterbury demands. Letters patent and red leather envelopes, bewigged lawyers, ruffs and waterfall lace cravats and all the paraphernalia of establishment were there.

There was compromise too in the sermon. There were no prophetic words to a nation on the brink of war, nor much of his valued psychological insight into the uncertainties of our secular age. The sermon was addressed to the internal audience of the church, and in particular at the conservative evangelicals who have been so critical of Dr Williams' liberal views on homosexuality.

Outside the cathedral there were just half a dozen zealots carrying placards about the inerrancy of the Bible (and one with a poster offering "the Bible's cure for sodomy").

Dr Williams' sermon was far more evangelical than anything by his predecessor George Carey. It focused on the "simple fact of Jesus at the heart of all our words and worship, behind the curtain of our anxieties and our theories, our struggles and our suspicions".

He told church members: "I have to live in a community that is more than just the gathering of those who happen to agree with me because I need also to be surprised and challenged by the Jesus each of you has experienced." That would have outworkings in the real world, he said, because to see the face of God in everyone meant Christians grieving or protesting "about war, about debt and poverty, about prejudice, about the humiliations of unemployment or the vacuous cruelty of sexual greed and unfaithfulness, about the abuse of children, or the neglect of the helpless elderly".

The anti-Williams placards were vastly outnumbered by anti-war ones. "Blair heed the sane archbishop not the mad march Bush," one said. But his only reference to them was: "no one can be written off; no group, no nation, no minority can be just a scapegoat to resolve our fears and uncertainties".

It was a "very clever sermon", commentators agreed. It was "a terribly disappointing missed opportunity", said those who hoped Dr Williams would use the TV and radio coverage to speak to the whole nation, not just the Church.