Dr Williams informed the audience that the church's place in civil society was at its most unique when it encouraged the human vision of responsibility and justice for a common good, beyond the constraints of conventional political power:
The church "needs to establish its credentials as 'non-violent' - that is, as not contending against other kinds of human group for a share of ordinary political power," he said.
"The Church is most credible when least preoccupied with its security and most engaged with the human health of its environment."
The strength of the church's contribution to civil society is, he said, the commitment of Christians to their belief, as 'trustees' of God's truth and authority in human society.
"The church is ..... the trustee of a vision that is radical and universal, the vision of a social order that is without fear, oppression, the violence of exclusion and the search for scapegoats because it one where each recognises their dependence on all and each is seen as having an irreplaceable gift for all," he said.
"The church cannot begin to claim that it consistently lives by this; its failure is all too visible, century by century. But its credibility does not hang on unbroken success; only on its continued willingness to be judged by what it announces and points to, the non-competitive, non violent order of God's realm, centred upon Jesus and accessible through commitment to him."
He went on to insist that this vision is found and worked out at the level of the individual:
"The dignity of every person is non-negotiable: each has a unique gift to give, each is owed respect and patience and the freedom to contribute what is given them.
"This remains true whether we are speaking of a gravely disabled person - when we might be tempted to think they would be better off removed from human society, or of a suspected terrorist - when we might be tempted to think that torture could be justified in extracting information, or of numberless poor throughout the world - when we should be more comfortable if we were allowed to regard them as no more than collateral damage in the steady advance of prosperity for our 'developed' economies."
Finally Dr Williams addressed the question of jihad and the possible convergence of the Christian and Muslim approach to religious witness in society: "Both our faiths bring to civil society a conviction that what they embody and affirm is not a marginal affair; both claim that their legitimacy rests not on the license of society but on God's gift.
"They cannot be committed to violent struggle to prevail at all costs, because that would suggest a lack of faith in the God who has called them; they cannot be committed to a policy of coercion and oppression because that would again seek to put the power of the human believer or the religious institution in the sovereign place that only God's reality can occupy."
