The Church of England should be self-confident and independent of spirit

In his sermon on Sunday, the Archbishop of York, the Most Rev and Right Honourable Dr David Hope, expressed the view that the Church of England "can learn from the wonder of Harry Potter". His congregation might have wondered instead if things had really come to this: the established Church, with its long and occasionally glorious history, looking for inspiration from a children's fantasy. But the Archbishop's new gospel is that the Church should concentrate on attracting people back to its services and spend less time on the sort of internal debate it held yesterday at the General Synod about its links with the state.

Dr Hope certainly has a point, for his Church shows few signs of realising the grave nature of its decline. But in trying to portray the vitally important discussion of the Church's independence from state as a purely "internal" matter, he was doing a grave disservice to Anglicans and non-Anglicans alike.

Many of the arguments heard yesterday are familiar. From the point of view of many in our increasingly secular society, the very notion of an "established Church" that encompasses a few active members is anathema, absurd even. For those who profess a different brand of christianity – Catholics, Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists and others – to say nothing of other faiths, such as Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Jews and Sikhs, the various pieces of discriminatory legislation derived from the established position of the Anglican Church are downright offensive.

Why should the monarch or the heir to the throne be the only people barred by law from marrying a Catholic? Why shouldn't an atheist be sovereign? Why should the senior clergy of the Church of England be the only ministers of faith entitled by right to a seat in the House of Lords, thus helping to frame laws that govern us all? And is it really sensible for senior members of the Church of England to be chosen by a prime minister, even if he or she doesn't believe in God?

For its own sake, the Church of England could go back to its pre-20th century practice of forwarding only a single name for approval to the Queen via the prime minister for its most senior positions. That would at least liberate the Church to determine its own destiny, while satisfying the traditionalists' wishes to retain the outward formalities of establishment.

But it would be better to loosen the ties that bind the Church to the body politic. One of the underlying reasons of the Church's decline is the comforting delusion that, while it has the formal role of providing moral leadership to the nation, it need not confront the scale of the challenge it faces. As a result of this, it has all but disappeared in many cities and is less and less part of rural life (and it is on the ground in these places that it can still perform a vital role in dealing with some of the failings of our society). Its participation at state occasions hardly makes up for such deficiencies.

The probable next Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, comes from Wales, a disestablished branch of the Anglican communion. It is encouraging that, even while the Synod displays its innate conservatism, he and the Prince of Wales, heir to the title of head of the Church and defender of the faith, have indicated they wish to modernise the Church of England's position in a multifaith, multicultural society. Sadly, progressives who want to create an independent, self-confident Anglican community will struggle to defeat the suffocating complacency that dogs the Church of England.