Secularism is the most important challenge faced by Christians in Ireland today, the new Church of Ireland Archbishop of Armagh, Dr Richard Clarke, has said.

And he added that he fully accepted his Church’s belief that marriage should be between a man and a woman, the Irish Times reports.

Speaking in Belfast yesterday after his election was announced, he said that we lived in an age “of increased secularism and increased secularisation” in both the North and South of Ireland.

Bishop Clarke, who is currently the Bishop of Meath and Kildare, and who addressed an Iona Institute conference on denominational schools last year, said: “It is very important that we have the confidence as Christians to meet the world, to listen to the world, but also to be able to speak to the world as well..

“The most important challenge of all is that we have bought into a secularist agenda that in some way the default human position is to be without faith and that faith is a kind of the bolt-on and add-on extra to . . . the natural person,” reported The Irish Times.

“If we can do a good thing for our fellow Christians it is to say that faith permeates every part of what you are and that it is not the bolt-on extra, it is not the add-on extra – it is what you are and you should not give that ground away as we do.”

Dr Clarke added that Christians in many respect had bought into that “utter fallacy” and countering that conviction was the “fight we have on our hands”.

He succeeds 68-year-old Archbishop Alan Harper who retired on Sunday.

“I am overawed but if I was not overawed I would be a complete idiot.” Dr Clarke said he would be facing many challenges but that overall he saw his leadership duty as enabling and encouraging Christians to uphold the gospel.

He added that he hoped that homosexuality and gay marriage would not cause a split in the Church of Ireland. “I would believe there is the will within the Church of Ireland, north and south, to find a way through.”

He said he was “not a radical” in relation to sexuality and homosexuality.

“We are not talking about an issue, we are talking about people. And we are talking about people made in the image and likeness of God. And we must now see where does their relationship and their relationship possibilities – where can that find a place, and will it find a place within the full life of the church? We have to work on that. We will inevitably come from different perspectives,” he said.

On the issue of gay marriage he was in full agreement with the church position that “marriage refers to a man and a woman”.