The Church of England offers a still, small voice of calm in uncertain times, the Archbishop of York said yesterday.

Speaking on the first day of General Synod in York, Dr John Sentamu said: 'As we now seek to reassess our relationships, in our local communities, in Europe, and internationally, our goal must always be the common good of all.'

His comments came as he moved a special motion on the state of the nation. It called, among other things, upon parties to consider the causes of voter apathy and non-participation in the recent election, and on 'Christians everywhere to maintain pressure on politicians of all parties to put the cohesion of the nation and its communities at the heart of their programmes'.

Sentamu said: 'We must learn from our present political and economic challenges to think less about the price of things and more about the value of things.

'There will be many lessons to learn from the fire in Grenfell Tower – but we are already aware that false economies can lead to human tragedy.

'Social care, specifically the so called 'dementia tax', should be an area where we are better off working together, and taking the risk jointly.

'This issue of public sector pay has demonstrated that there is little sign of a coherent plan about how to fund the health service, education, social care, defence, housing, or transport infrastructure.

'Proposed solutions pit one section of society against another to provide the funds – either by cutting public spending for some, or increasing taxes for others. Surely the nature of communal action is that it is precisely action taken together.'

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, said: 'In the last year one of the things that has become more apparent is that our sense of identity, has become more blurred and reached some kind of crisis and culmination.

'We are a society where there are rival attempts to seize and proclaim mutually exclusive identities.'

The motion, entitled After the General Election, a still small voice of calm, was carried overwhelmingly on a show of hands.