He stressed that one of his "biggest anxieties" was the prospect of a Middle East without a "creative" Christian presence and in which Christianity's holy sites had become nothing more than museums.
"I think it's important to challenge the idea that the historic Christian communities in the Middle East are just museum pieces," he said.
"If the Holy Land itself, Syria, Iraq, Egypt, are not to be theme parks as far as Christianity is concerned, then Christians elsewhere in the world need to keep their responsibility, their awareness, keen."
Dr Williams highlighted the suffering of Iraqi Christian refugees who have sought refuge in neighbouring countries, particularly Syria, from a violent campaign being waged against Christians by Islamic extremists in Iraq.
"The state of those refugees is a matter of deep concern, indeed I would say a scandal," he said.
"We know the threats and pressures under which Iraqi Christians live. We know, therefore, how far away we are from a peaceful settlement and security within Iraq for all its communities.
"We know that so long as that continues the pressure is on for not only Iraqi Christians to leave but for other neighbouring countries to have to [help] in ways that they are not well equipped to do."
He added that the silence from Western governments over the plight of the Iraqi Christian refugees was "a real tragedy".
Dr Williams called on Western governments and Christian communities to help preserve Christianity in the Middle East.
"Christian communities have been a vital part of the political, social and cultural health of the Middle East.
"A region deprived of that contribution becomes a region more unstable, more open to the pressures of fanaticism, less able to deal with its own internal problems, less able to deal with the rest of the world," he warned.
"We should give as much effort as we are capable of to ensuring that that monochrome, inward-looking and inherently unstable future does not happen."
The conference announced a new scholarship to study the impact of migration among Iraqi Christians, supported by the Archbishop's Mission to the Assyrians, the Philip Usher Fund and the Anglican and Eastern Churches Association. In addition to this, the Nikaean Ecumenical Trust is giving a Bishop Buxton Bursary to two Syrian Orthodox deacons from Lebanon to study English in the UK for two months and to learn something of the church in the UK.
