The breakdown in law and order and civility and the loss of confidence in society resulting in open lawlessness, burglaries, murder and mayhem is something none of us could have envisaged in the first decade of the 21st Century. On many levels it is incomprehensible. These are not people who are starving for food; many have jobs, all live in homes of one sort or another, regrettably many from broken or single parent homes. To my knowledge, none are living under bridges.

It all makes this uprising even more incomprehensible.

We must ask ourselves: are these flash mobs economic and political in nature or are they of a different order rooted in morals and the spiritual climate in our nation?

If it is the latter, and I believe it is, then I as the head of the Church of England must ask the question: is the Church of England to blame for the weak and inadequate proclamation of the message we say we believe in? Have we rung an uncertain sound from our pulpits, given off mixed signals and messages and worse, watered down the message to fit a post-modern generation? Have we become so fearful of telling people the Good News and also the Bad News if they do not repent? I wonder.

England has been in turmoil before. In the 18th Century, England was in such a mess that a man named John Wesley rose up and called upon the people of this nation to repent. Wesley continued for fifty years - entering churches when he was invited, and taking his stand in the fields, in halls, cottages, and chapels, when the churches would not receive him. The moral condition of England was at an all time low. The eighteenth century was dirtier, more dangerous and more intimate with the physical functions of life than our own today. The growth in London's maritime trade during the 18th century brought more and more ships and inevitably an increase in the supply of prostitutes. Many women were forced into prostitution by poverty. For most prostitutes, life was a constant struggle against poverty, illness and danger. The Times reported in 1785 that every year 5000 streetwalkers died in the city.

While conditions have changed dramatically today, thank God, the hearts of people have not.

This past week, smelling opportunity, hoards of youths took to the streets of the major cities of this nation, broke into storefronts and stole millions of pounds worth of goods and then torched the buildings as they left.

This is a spiritual problem. It is both moral and spiritual because we as a church have become irrelevant to the life of more than 90% of the British people. Only a handful of people attend church and most of them are old and aging fast. The young cannot be found in our churches.

Our clergy are more consumed with dressing up, looking the part, making themselves look important and, what is even worse, they offer nothing but platitudes in the pulpit. Many are little more than social workers in clergy outfits.

Regrettably, Melanie Phillips is right when she says that church leaders should stop prattling like soft-headed social workers and start preaching, once again, the moral concepts that underlie our civilization. "When our political leaders decide to oppose the culture war that has been waged against that civilization rather than supinely acquiescing in its destruction, then - and only then - will we start to get to grips with this terrible problem."

The truth is the vast majority of our clergy do not have a clear fix on what the gospel is and, regrettably, I, myself, have given mixed signals by failing to speak in clear and bold terms what it is we believe and what it is that we should be shouting from our pulpits each Sunday. We are so afraid of being called fundamentalists that we have forgotten the very fundamentals that we should be proclaiming.

John Wesley had no such problem telling Britain what the cause of its malaise was. He preached it from pulpits, on horseback, in the public square, anywhere people could be found and he could be heard. I doubt he cared what the press or politicians thought of him with their ridicule and mockery. He cared not a whit. He cared only for what God thought. Today he might Twitter and do FACEBOOK. The message would be the same.

Church of England clergy, and myself have been too busy being politically correct, too busy nuancing public policy, while failing to see the big picture that human nature has not changed, that people are lost in their sin that is both personal public and corporate and we have failed to called this nation to repentance.

As one blogger I read observed, "The church has been complicit in accepting the undermining of the moral order in education, at schools and in the academy, in its total emphasis on justifying itself by its service of the underprivileged, and in failing to teach clearly about the sanctity of marriage and virginity until marriage."

The failure, my lords, is ours, and more specifically, it is mine. Today, when I return to Lambeth Palace, I will call a special Synod and I will have just one item on the agenda, how can we reach Britain for Christ? I will not allow any debate about women bishops nor will I allow any parsing of sodomy to appease a handful of pansexualists. That day is done. I will demand that the 10 Commandments be read from every pulpit for the next two years and I will demand a return to the energetic transmission of Biblical morality. If my priests cannot do that, they will be asked to go and let those who will, do it.

We have one message and one message only, "to preach Christ" and I as the chief shepherd of the flock intend to do just that. If we fail, and we might, we will do so having fought a good fight, and finished well. It is only then that we can stand before our Maker and Judge and hear "well done", until then we have work to do. We, the church have a message. If we do not proclaim it, we as a nation are doomed.

Thank you.

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What the Archbishop of Canterbury actually said

My Lords, along with all of the members of Your Lordship's House, I wish to associate myself with the tributes that have been paid to the work of the police force in recent days, and the work of the emergency services. These are people who have put themselves at risk in a very costly way in order to minimise the risk to others, and we are reminded by what we have seen in recent days of the crucial role that these services play in our society. I believe there are indeed questions about the right level of policing that is appropriate to a complex and troubled society like ours, and I hope that those are questions that will be seriously addressed in the days ahead.

I wish also to express the deepest sympathy to those who have lost members of their family, who have lost their livelihoods, who have in some measure lost hope and confidence in recent days. And it is perhaps that loss of hope and confidence that is the most serious, the most long-term issue which, we have to address as a society. In the events we have seen in recent days, there is nothing to romanticise and there is nothing to condone in the behaviour that has spread across our streets. This is indeed criminality - criminality pure and simple, perhaps, but as the Prime Minister reminded us, criminality always has a context, and we have before us the task of understanding that context more fully.

Seeking explanations, it is worth remembering, is not the same as seeking excuses, and in an intelligent and critical society, we do seek explanations so that we may be able to respond with greater intelligence and greater generosity. My Lords, one of the most troubling features, as I think all would agree, of recent days, has been the spectacle of not only young people, but even children of school age, children as young as 7 taking part in the events we have seen. And surely, high on our priorities as we respond to these circumstances must be the question of what we are to do in terms not only of rebuilding the skills of parenting in some of our communities, but in rebuilding education itself.

Over the last two decades, many would agree that our educational philosophy at every level has been more and more dominated by an instrumentalist model; less and less concerned with a building of virtue, character and citizenship - 'civic excellence' as we might say. And a good educational system in a healthy society is one that builds character that builds virtue.

In the wake of the financial crisis a few years ago, we began to hear more discussion than we'd heard for a very long time about the need for a recovery of the virtues. The need for a recovery of the sense of how character was to be built in our society, because character my Lords, involves an awareness not only of the connection between cause and effect in my own acts, but a sense, a deepened sense of empathy with others, a deepened sense of our involvement together in a social project in which we all have to participate.

There are indeed, as we've been reminded, no quick answers here. And I believe one of the most significant questions that we ought to be addressing in the wake of these deplorable events, is what kind of education we are interested in, for what kind of a society. Are we prepared to think not only about discipline in classrooms, but also about the content and ethos of our educational institutions - asking can we once again build a society which takes seriously the task of educating citizens, not consumers, not cogs in an economic system, but citizens.

Yesterday I was speaking to a friend who teaches in higher education, who said that she had been overwhelmed with the number of messages she had received from the young people she was involved in, expressing their anger and their frustration at what they had seen on television. They believed that their own generation was being betrayed by the activity of many young people.

And that, My Lords, is simply a reminder that the young people of this country deserve the best. The reaction of so many of them to the events of recent days has been, as we've already been reminded, an inspiration. Just as has been the reaction of so many in our communities - generous, sacrificial, and imaginative. My Right Reverend Brother the Bishop of London has already spoken in other contexts about the way in which communities have rallied, and the place of churches and other faith communities in that rallying, to provide support, to provide emergency help, and simply to provide a quiet space for reflection. Communities deserve the best, and above all, let me repeat it, My Lords, young people deserve the best.

I would hope that in our response to these events we shall hold in mind what we owe to the next generation of our citizens - and I underline that phrase "the next generation of our citizens". What we have seen is a breakdown, not of society as such, but a breakdown of the sense of civic identity, shared identity, shared responsibility. The Government has very rightly made a priority of building community cohesion in what it has spoken of in recent months.

Talk of the "Big Society", of which we have heard a great deal, has focused precisely on the rebirth, the renaissance, of that civic identity. Now we need to see what that is going to look like. Now we need - all of us, without any point-scoring from a partisan approach - we need all of us to reflect on what that building will require in terms of investment in the next generation - in formal education, but also in the provision of youth services, imaginatively and consistently, across the country.

My Lords, I've spoken a little about the way in which communities have responded, not only volunteer bodies but local businesses and also individuals, building new friendships, new networks. People have discovered why community matters. They've discovered why solidarity is important. They have begun to discover those civic virtues that we've talked about in the abstract.

In other words, My Lords, I believe that this is a moment which we must seize, a moment where there is sufficient anger at the breakdown of civic solidarity, sufficient awareness of the resources people have in helping and supporting one another, sufficient hope (in spite of everything) of what can be achieved by the governing institutions of this country, including in Your Lordship's House, to engage creatively with the possibilities that this moment gives us. And I trust, My Lords, that we shall respond with energy to that moment which could be crucial for the long-term future of our country and our society.

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Rowan Williams is the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury