My man of the year: the Archbishop of Canterbury

My man of the year is definitely Albus Dumbledore, the highly-principled Headmaster of Hogwarts School of wizardry and witchcraft, who - if his creator is to be believed - is gay.

I'm sorry, that was a mistake. When I said 'Albus Dumbledore', I meant 'Rowan Williams'; and when I wrote 'Headmaster of Hogwarts' I should've typed 'Archbishop of Canterbury'. Moreover, by 'gay', I of course meant to imply - in the best Anglican tradition - 'happily married with two lovely children'.

However, one constant between the two - besides their being bearded dress-wearers - is that although Dumbledore is a fictional character while Dr Williams is very much flesh and blood, both have 'creators'.

Of course, we're in no position to know whether Dumbledore knows that he was invented by JK Rowling - although such metaphysical speculations would doubtless gladden the heart of the most abstruse medieval scholastic - but we can be certain that Dr Williams believes himself to have been created by another hugely popular author, one he refers to by the nom de plume 'God'.

Or so Dr Williams claims. Actually, I take a close interest in the Archbishop of Canterbury and all his pronouncements, and I do truly believe that 2008 has been a good year for him.

Archbishop Williams shows absolutely no regard for his power base

As his friend AN Wilson has pointed out: perhaps only Dr Williams could have held the Anglican communion together during the Lambeth Conference, while African bigots and American liberals attempted to tear it asunder.

That he managed this, in part, by not speaking his mind on certain key issues, is a tribute to his rejection of 'me-me-me' school of public posturing.

Just as commendably media-unfriendy were the archbishop's nuanced comments on the role of sharia law in British society, while his recent remarks on the possible desirability of the Church's disestablishment show a man with absolutely no regard for his power base whatsoever, so, one thing's for sure: Williams is no politician.

As to his interventions on the looming recession, Dr Williams's much repeated observation that the PM's application of fiscal stimulus is like "giving a drug addict more drugs", has been misinterpreted quite as much as anything he has said about Islam.

This was not another drag on the old Keysianism/monetarism saw horse, but appeal that went to the core of things, namely, the spiritual vacuity of a society that chases endlessly after pretty baubles, and the equal vacuity of a political class that sees stimulating such behaviour as the only possible means of 'wealth creation'. This contention was so against the prevailing orthodoxy that it's no wonder most commentators simply couldn't get what the economic recusant was on about.

This is a view of religion as an effective manner of dealing with life's vicissitudes

But it's in an interview recently published by the New Statesman that the archbishop most clearly demonstrates his sophistication, and a distinctly worldly savoir faire; his dismissive estimation of Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and the fashionable atheistic claque gathered around them was effectively a paraphrase of Voltaire: "If Richard Dawkins didn't exist it would be necessary to invent him."

All of which brings me to my core suspicion about my near neighbour in the London Borough of Lambeth: he may believe he was created by 'God', yet I find it almost impossible to equate his conception of Christianity with that espoused by sky-spirit worshipping types who really think 'He' nailed his only son to a bit of wood.

Take this observation from Dr Williams in the same interview: "Look at Christianity carefully and what you see is this balance, between dependence on the God who created you and the sense that grace and gift are utterly fundamental, and you rely on that. And, coming out of that, a certain authority in your own life, living to live your own life, and shape creatively your own life and the life of those around you."

This, surely, is a view of the value of religion as a heuristic - an effective manner of dealing with life's vicissitudes - that no one could disagree with.

It suggests no arcane knowledge, nor presupposes any privileged faith; substitute the words 'good life' for 'God' and there could be few who would dissent - except believers in an omnipotent supernatural being who chooses to go round creating worlds as some bizarre form of real-time experiment in moral philosophy.

Of course, it may be that Rowan Williams believes in this latter kind of God quite as much as Albus Dumbledore does in magic, but I'd still contend that's not enough to justify the archbishopric; after all, magic is just another heuristic, one that its practitioners are only willing to adapt - what's important is what works.

As to the alternative, hard-line belief in God, it's worth noting that not even the most ardent fan of the Harry Potter books would be able to suspend their disbelief in them, if Dumbledore 'believed' in JK Rowling. ·