Dean Jensen used a speech to conservative Christians in England to call for the resignation of the spiritual leader of the church, the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, who has become a target of critics for his private, liberal views about homosexual relationships.

Tonight, in an address to the Perth diocese synod, Dr Carnley said any suggestion that Anglicanism was dying in Australia because of a drop-off in church attendance levels was false and misleading.

Referring to Dr Jensen's claims at the general synod, Dr Carnley said the church should beware of the "the fallacy of negative self-talk".peIts future was not as dismal as some maintained, he said.

"To say that the Anglican Church of Australia only has about 20 or 30 years of life left in it is a nonsense," Dr Carnley said.

"We need to work on the full picture before accepting, uncritically, a single set of statistics that might confirm a facile perception of hopeless decline."

During the general synod, Dr Jensen said the church had about 10 or 20 years left, and as such new Christians need to be made by a renewed enthusiasm for sharing the gospel.

"The reaction of benign neglect is irresponsible, but the reaction of panic is also irresponsible," Dr Jenson told the general synod.

"We are living in one of the toughest places in the world in 21st century secular society. We have to address the real Australia – multicultural Australia – otherwise we will be a British experiment that has failed."

He quoted statistics from the 2001 National Church Life Survey to paint a picture of declining church attendance levels.

But Dr Carnley tonight said the survey, which found 178,000 people attended an Anglican church on the Sunday of the audit, was not an accurate reflection and average attendances could possibly be double that.

Many Australians attended church on a mid-weekly, fortnightly or monthly basis, or participated in services at school, retirement villages or nursing homes, he said.

Dr Carnley identified education, youth work and a greater connection between the clergy and local schools as areas the Anglican church needed to focus on to ensure its future.

He called on federal and state governments throughout the country to recognise that parents were increasingly seeking religion-based schools for their children.

Governments should support the Anglican church's efforts to open new schools, he said.

"Given that the opening of new church schools actually saves the government money, the government should, for purely economic reasons, be welcoming the current resurgence of interest in a religiously based education with open arms," Dr Carnley said.

Dr Carnley, 67, who has been the Archbishop of Perth since 1981 and head of the Anglican church in Australia for the last five years, is due to step down in May 2005.

Media officer Margaret Rodgers today said Dr Jensen and Dean Jensen would not be responding to Dr Carnley's comments.

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