The contrast between the charismatic Archbishop of York and Rowan Williams, the cerebral and prevaricating occupant of Lambeth Palace, sprang into sharp relief last week. As MPs and the public rallied to Sentamu’s withering attack on British Airways for banning an employee from openly wearing a cross at work, Williams chose to travel with BA for a meeting with Pope Benedict XVI in the Vatican.
The BA controversy, which culminated in the airline’s decision to reconsider its policy, was only the latest occasion when Williams has been accused of muddle and appeasement while Sentamu, who ranks second in the church hierarchy, offered a clear and unapologetic message of principle.
Earlier this month, the country’s first black archbishop questioned the right of Muslim women to wear the veil in public, saying it did not “conform to norms of decency”. He said: “I think in British society you can wear what you want, but you can’t expect British society to be reconfigured around you.” His comments put him at odds with Williams, who defended the right of Muslim women to wear the full veil.
Sentamu also took on the BBC, which he claimed was biased against the Church of England: “We get more knocks. They do to us what they dare not do to Muslims.”
In an impassioned critique of the “systematic erosion” of the majority faith by an “illiberal atheism”, he castigated the abandonment of traditional Christmas cards in favour of Season’s Greetings versions, the introduction of “Winterval” in the Christmas holiday period and the Royal Mail for not featuring Jesus on Christmas stamps.
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With his trademark gap-toothed grin and staccato enunciation of quaint English, the Ugandan-born archbishop is credited with having an electrifying effect on faithless, post-Christian Britain. He offers the moral certainties of Africa where he learnt under Idi Amin’s cruel regime to cherish the values most of us take for granted. Hence such headlines as: “Could this man save the Church of England?”
His campaign against political correctness has addressed the shame so many educated English people feel for their culture, history and religion. He experienced no such feelings as a boy in Africa, listening to the Queen’s coronation on the radio. His family always checked their purchases for a “Made in Britain” stamp. Indeed, he has called for a proper celebration of St George’s Day.
He is married to Margaret, a Church House official, and they have two grown-up children, Grace and Geoffrey. As a guest on Desert Island Discs in 2003, his favourite records included What a Wonderful World by Louis Armstrong. His chosen luxury was a kitchen — cooking and music being his main interests, along with rugby and football.
Williams, hailed as a new broom on his appointment in 2002, is now perceived as an unworldly academic who ties himself in rhetorical knots while his church tears itself apart over the ordination of women and gay priests. He sounded too clever by half in John Humphrys’s recent radio series, Humphrys in Search of God, when he spoke mystically of “silent waiting on the truth, pure sitting and breathing in the presence of the question mark”.
“For God’s sake, man . . . why are you so nice?” one newspaper demanded recently. Last week the tone became harsher, when a Daily Telegraph comment piece announced, “The archbishop’s days are numbered.” It suggested that Williams, undermined by a feud with Lord Carey, his predecessor, will step down early to make way for Sentamu.
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The 57-year-old former Bishop of Birmingham has certainly been attracting the limelight. His Old Testament protest about the carnage in the Middle East in August, when he pitched his tent in York Minister for a week of prayer, drew comparisons with Jesus riding a donkey as a sign of humility. Grandstanding, said his critics, yet it was an eloquent reproach to the government’s refusal to call for an immediate ceasefire in Lebanon.
In his maiden speech to the House of Lords last week, he asserted that Labour’s over-reliance on anti-terror laws could trap the public in an endless “legal spider’s web”. He also warned that “unlimited power” could corrupt political leaders.
By a curious twist, Sentamu is Tony Blair’s man, appointed against the wishes of the powerful House of Bishops, who briefed against him. “He is incoherent at meetings,” a senior bishop complained. “He speaks before he thinks. He has not connected his voice and his brain.”
No 10 appointed him as the only black member of the inquiry into the murder of Stephen Lawrence, the black teenager. The resulting Macpherson report accused the Metropolitan police of “institutional racism”. He absolved the Church of England of the same charge, but said it had been slow to welcome black people.
Chairing a review of the investigation into the death of the Damilola Taylor, the 10-year-old Nigerian boy killed on a south London stairwell in 2000, Sentamu was scathing about the police and criminal justice system.
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Nobody expected much of Sentamu when he was born the sixth of 13 children on June 10, 1949, in Kampala. To the consternation of his mother, Ruth, and his father, John, a headmaster, he was so small that the local bishop was summoned to baptise him immediately.
He survived a sickly childhood at Old Kampala secondary school to study law at Makerere University in Kampala. He went on to become the country’s chief magistrate and then a high court judge before the age of 25.
He clashed with Amin on a series of human rights issues. He was arrested and beaten up after defying an order to deliver a not guilty verdict on one of the dictator’s cousins, whom he jailed for five years.
He takes pride in having sent innocent people to jail as a ploy to save them from summary execution. He explained that he was acting in the spirit of Oskar Schindler, the German businessman who saved hundreds of Jews from the Nazis.
Sentamu had preached sermons since the age of 17 but the murder of his friend, Archbishop Janani Luwum, made him resolve to become a priest. He escaped in 1974 only because he had secured a place at Cambridge to read theology. Ordained in 1979, he served in parishes in Cambridge and London before becoming Bishop of Stepney in 1996.
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A popular and outspoken Bishop of Birmingham, he fought against gun crime in the Midlands and tried to rally people behind MG Rover, the troubled car maker, by placing an order for a Rover 75 saloon.
He is not immune to the buzz casting him as the next Archbishop of Canterbury. “He’s got an eye on the top job,” said an insider. The problem is that while the House of Bishops’ support for Williams has diminished, its antipathy to Sentamu has not.
So on the face of it, there is not much chance of the predicted scenario in which Williams is forced to step down a decade early in 2008, when the Anglican church is set to parade its divisions at the Lambeth conference. A more likely departure date is 2010, when he will be 60.
Events could be influenced by Sentamu’s new world role in the inner circle of the Anglican communion. The appeal of a Ugandan trying to unite the Third World bishops is undeniable. However, he has little patience with Anglicans’ internecine battles and is apt to remark: “How can you squabble about gay priests when half of Africa is dying of Aids?”
He has condemned the language in which the gay debate is conducted, particularly by some African archbishops. “To suggest that to be gay equals evil, I find that quite unbelievable,” he told The Guardian. He also made clear he would have no difficulty in ordaining women bishops.
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Sentamu has now confounded his critics by catching the mood of the country. His mission, he has said, is to reconcile England with its Christian tradition. “Christianity is the very soil of this place. Look at what you did in the past, remember what you did.”
He senses that people are becoming “excited” by Christianity again: “There are huge crowds. Among the young, what is happening is amazing. There is a hunger for belonging, for believing. There is a hunger and slowly it is being fed.”