New champion

I stood outside York Minster today as the new Archbishop of York left his service of inauguration. Dr John Sentamu is a small man with a big reputation. He recalled a comment by a former holder of his post, Dr Michael Ramsey, who had said that he looked forward to when there would be an African Archbishop of York. Today that prophecy was fulfilled by a former judge from Uganda who had fallen victim to the regime of Idi Armin in the '70s. He fled to Britain and began his training for the Anglican ministry. Today John Sentamu was greeted with a colourful service in which he even played a set of African drums alongside a young friend of mine Matt Seymour. In Dr Sentamu the church has a new champion in it's fight against prejudice and fear. He is very welcome here in York and I look forward to the impact of his leadership in the often dull middle class Church of England.

On my desk is a piece of paper from another campaigner who wants to uphold the Christian traditions of Britain and in particular, York. Unlike Dr Sentamu, he feels that these traditions were best served by the homogeneous society that supposedly made Britain great 50 years ago. Homogeneous in his terms means white. He is a candidate for the British National Party. I found the leaflet, pushed through my door, offensive. It implied that the people who had migrated to the UK were the cause of many of the country's problems, by highlighting the terrorist bombings in London this summer. I called the number on the leaflet to register my objection. It belonged to Ian Dawson who told me in the course of conversation that he belonged to the Church of England, but refused to reveal which church he attended. He also gave me some statistics about the number of white girls raped by Asian gangs in Bradford, as though white men had never in history abused black or Asian girls. I requested that no more of his literature be delivered to my door.

Dr Sentamu has received racist hate mail since his appointment as Archbishop of York. The display of the multicultural face of the church at his inauguration in York today shows that he has not been deterred by it.

Rather than vainly hoping to turn the clock back by 50 years, others are facing the future as brothers and sisters from many ethnic origins. Together we are discovering everyone's contribution as we build our future. Dr Sentamu will be prominent with his contribution. Thank you for accepting the call to be the first African Archbishop of York.