The Church of England must act as symbol of peace in an increasingly
divided world, the Archbishop of Canterbury has said ahead of his first
Easter Service.The Most Rev Justin Welby said the Church has to show it can manage disagreement "gracefully" over issues such as women bishops and gay marriage.
The Archbishop said the Church faced a "challenge" of showing the rest of society that its members can hold different views but still remain "gracefully and deeply committed to each other".
He said if it can do so, it can be a "sign to the world" of peace and reconciliation.
It came on a day when millions of Christians around Britain and the world celebrated the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
The Archbishop of Canterbury also gave his first Easter Service but before he did so, he said in a recorded interview with a radio station: "We need to understand reconciliation within the Church as the transformation of destructive conflict, not unanimity. It doesn't mean we all agree, it is that we find ways of disagreeing, perhaps very passionately but loving each other deeply at the same time, gracefully and deeply committed to each other. That is the challenge for the Church and that is the challenge if the Church is actually going to speak to our society which is increasingly divided in many different ways, here and overseas, over huge issues."
Mr Welby's remarks were part of a wide-ranging interview for an Easter Sunday broadcast of the Travellers' Tales slot on Premier Christian Radio.
The 57-year-old former oil industry executive, who was enthroned earlier this month at Canterbury Cathedral, told the programme how he and his wide Caroline coped after their first born child, Johanna, died in a road accident in France in 1983.
He said: "God is aware of our suffering, of the suffering of this very broken world and our suffering was as nothing compared to many people and he is at work even in the darkest places."
Asked if he could sleep at night given the pressures of his new role as Archbishop of Canterbury, Mr Welby said: "I sleep well on the whole. I think one of the really important things about this job is that it is not a papacy, the Archbishop of Canterbury is only one among the diocesan bishops. The Church of England is episcopally led but synodically governed, so it is not even the bishops who all decide what happens."
The Archbishop, who has more than 25,000 followers on Twitter, said it was important to use the social networks but admitted he was not good at tweeting.
He said: "I try to tweet regularly, it is a strange old thing, because a lot of twitter stuff is 'well I am just having my second piece of toast for breakfast' that sort of stuff. I am not very good at it."
His last tweet was on March 27 when he said: "In Holy Week as we approach the cross we need to recognise both the suffering of the world around and our own need of repentance."
The Catholic leader of England and Wales hailed Easter as a "triumph of light over darkness and life over death".
In his Easter Vigil, the Archbishop of Westminster quoted recently-elected Pope Francis as he called for believers to live their faith with a "young heart".