I HAVE been surprisingly excited about the arrival of our new archbishop all week. I say "surprisingly" because I'm not especially religious, unless you count hedging your bets in moments of crisis (sick child, worrying lumps, terrorist alerts while husband is in London, occasionally, and shamefully, a parking space), which I suspect God probably doesn't.

So what was I doing, hurrying to the Millennium Bridge to catch Archbishop Sentamu steam into York by boat on Wednesday morning? And a pretty nippy morning at that. Ducks were skidding on the ice in Rowntree Park lake and the grass was crispy with frost. "I hope he's got thermals on under his cassock," my friend Lucy shivered when I told her where I was going.

Drawn by the sound of African drums, I got to the riverbank just in time to see the archbishop's boat slide under the bridge. A group of well-wishers, who had already gathered there, cheered with delight. I found myself waving strenuously and shouting "Welcome to York" with an exuberance that rather shocked a lady dog-walker and a passing cyclist, not to mention me.

"Is it because he's black?" my neighbour asked, when I told her how pleased I was about Dr Sentamu's appointment. I considered this. Black faces are something of a novelty in York to be sure, but that isn't the reason.

It is because he is outspoken and charismatic and humorous and unstuffy and clearly isn't afraid to take risks. Most of all, it's because he seems genuinely to be a man of the people. Arriving on a pleasure boat when he could have had a motorcade - a nice, environmentally friendly touch - blessing babies, arranging a picnic in the Minster, washing children's feet . . . Archbishop John Sentamu is definitely going to make York a more interesting place.

Watching his inauguration on television, I found myself blinking unexpected tears at how moving the occasion was. More often, though, I found myself laughing, laughing with the sheer pleasure of seeing our new Archbishop of York in his Lion King cope and colourful mitre taking up the bongos like a rock star about to perform a drum solo while the choir boys and girls bopped in their pews.

York Minster had never seen anything like this. When the leopard-skin-clad dancers burst whooping on to the floor, the po faces of the clergy were a picture. John Sentamu's services have prompted dancing in the aisles in his previous ministries in Tulse Hill and Stepney. Give 'em time and I have no doubt they'll be doing it in the Minster.

Dr Sentamu's sermon was certainly different from the formal intonations one normally associates with such occasions. He quoted revolutionary Che Guevara and drew on fairy tales and even sayings from his own mother to drive home his crusade - and it is no less - to make the Church of England "a beacon for all our lives". If we are expecting a lot of John Sentamu, I'm under no illusion that he is going to expect a great deal more of us.

Are we up for this? While our new archbishop's zeal is exhilarating, he is asking people to step out of their church-on-Sunday comfort zone into a committed relationship with Christ, to become "corporate disciples", no less. In doing so, he believes, we can create a more just, equal, fraternal Britain, and a happier and more peaceful one, too.

Well, it's a tall order. Having switched over the telly to catch the news headlines, I found myself looking at another black family in another church service - the funeral of teenager Anthony Walker, whose murder, it was confirmed, had been racially motivated. Meanwhile, the BNP has set its sights on winning a place in the next City of York Council elections and a study released on Thursday revealed that British children harbour more racist attitudes than people think.

I'm saddened but not totally surprised by this news. I've heard teenagers, both well-educated and ignorant ones, being unapologetically racist. And it's not just kids. There's a narrow-mindedness, a kind of grudge, that seems ingrained in many people and the archbishop himself has received vile hate mail. Yet he wants to encourage us to rediscover our Englishness, our cultural identity. England, he says, has set the bar for democracy, for reason and argument over violence.

I would like to think he's right.

I can't speak for Christians, but I'm glad that John Sentamu is encouraging dialogue between all religions as well as agnostics and atheists. Most of all, I'm glad he's come here because I feel he may restore York's heart. It's a heart that has been battered and bruised by short-sighted, controversial and sometimes disastrous political leadership, as well as large-scale redundancies and crass commercial decisions.

We could do with someone to inspire us. A father figure, perhaps.

Updated: 16:05 Friday, December 02, 2005