The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, has launched a remarkable attack on the coalition government, warning that it is committing the country to "radical, long-term policies for which no one voted." In a leading article in tomorrow's New Statesman, which he has guest-edited, Williams writes that the "anxiety and anger" felt by voters is a result of the coalition's failure to expose its policies to "proper public argument".

His political intervention is the most significant by a church figure since Faith In The City, an excoriating critique of the Thatcher government, was published in 1985 by the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie.

With specific reference to David Cameron's health and education reforms, Williams says that the government's approach has created a mixture of "bafflement and indignation" among the public.

"With remarkable speed, we are being committed to radical, long-term policies for which no one voted," he writes. "At the very least, there is an understandable anxiety about what democracy means in such a context."

Before the general election, Cameron famously promised to stop the "top-down reorganisations of the NHS" but later embarked on the biggest reforms to the health service since its creation.

In reference to Michael Gove's education reforms, the Archbishop writes: "[T]he comprehensive reworking of the Education Act 1944 that is now going forward might well be regarded as a proper matter for open probing in the context of election debates." Gove's free school reforms were pushed through Parliament last summer with a haste usually reserved for emergency anti-terrorism laws.

Williams warns: "Government badly needs to hear just how much plain fear there is around such questions at present."

The Archbishop also questions David Cameron's "big society" agenda, a phrase which he describes as "painfully stale". He writes that the policy is viewed with "widespread suspicion" as an "opportunistic" cover for spending cuts, adding that is not credible for ministers to blame the last Labour government for Britain's problems.

In an implicit criticism of the Chancellor, George Osborne, Williams writes:"It isn't enough to respond with what sounds like a mixture of, "This is the last government's legacy," and, "We'd like to do more, but just wait until the economy recovers a bit."

He also launches a sustained attack on the government's welfare reforms, complaining of a "quiet resurgence of the seductive language of "deserving" and "undeserving" poor". In comments directed at the Work and Pensions Secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, the Archbishop criticises "the steady pressure" to increase "punitive responses to alleged abuses of the system".

In the leader, Williams says that his aim is to stimulate "a livelier debate" and to challenge the left to develop its own "big idea" as an alternative to the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition.

The full version of Rowan Williams's leader appears in this week's New Statesman.