It has turned out, that unbeknown to themselves, the occupiers outside St Paul's are camped on a hornet's nest. This nest is the secret point where the ancient arrangements of the English polity interlock with contemporary global finance.

The interlocking has two aspects. First, as initially Maurice Glasman and now George Monbiot have pointed out, certain freewheeling banking practices which helped to cause our current global recession were only made possible by a routing of even American monetary activity through the City of London. This is because it is uniquely independent of the normal scope of national law, while the power of corporate financial bodies over its local self-government was deliberately increased under Tony Blair. Yet far from this representing a survival of medieval corruption into the modern era, as Monbiot implies, it is rather, as Glasman far more accurately puts it, the result of a perversion of Medieval participatory and Guild arrangements, originally designed to subordinate commercial to social purposes, in the modern era.

And far from this perversion being some sort of anomaly, it rather indicates, in the sharpest possible way, just how the supposedly 'free market' depends upon aberrant legal privileges that license and underwrite a kind of international buccaneering which we have absurdly come to see as normative. Something as apparently abstract and natural as 'the laws of the market' turn out to be genealogically traceable to geographical and customary peculiarities. Conversely, this realisation allows us to see how we can begin to construct a fairer international market, always linking economic to social value, if we reform the City of London and more generally erect a different legal framework within which economic transactions can operate.

For this reason, Maurice Glasman and Blue Labour have been endeavouring to persuade the occupiers to make the status of the City the specific object of their protest. The argument here is that if we are really true to medieval intentions, we would abolish the distinction between the City of London and London as Metropolis and seek to ensure that all Londoners had a voice in the managing of the whole of London's wealth, while equally trying to ensure (through perhaps a renewed guild structure and a bicameral ruling institution, including a vocational chamber) that all businesses and other free associations have a rightful say in the wider city's governance.

Of course this cannot be the only issue that the occupiers, part of a global movement of protest should be concerned with. But local protests, to be effective, need to have a specific  local object, and in this case they are presented with one that could, indeed, make an immense global difference. It would seem that the protesters are so far refusing to move in this more concentrated direction solely because of the unwarranted influence of a few communist and anarchist extremists. The latter are not the real heart of the occupation movement which is remarkably a spontaneous populist expression, not clearly linked to any established political tendencies. Indeed its implicit rejection of the alliance of financial and bureaucratic oligarchies aligns it naturally with the new 'Postliberal' politics which ResPublica exists to support.

Yet it is only if they adopt some such more specific goal that the protestors will be equal to the symbolic resonance of the hornet's nest where they find themselves encamped. And curiously, it is the same lamentable failure to be alert to symbolic resonance which has characterised the official Anglican response so far - though in this respect it limps behind the vast majority of Anglican clergy and laity. This failure is all the more remarkable given that religions are supposed to be in the business of the symbolic, the ritual and the imagistic. Such things were scarcely invented yesterday by the media, and should be meat and drink to a Cathedral staff.

How can one explain this blindness? The minor aspect to any such explanation must concern the remarkable independence of Anglican Deans from episcopal oversight. In some ways this is commendable, and has, in part, allowed many cathedrals recently to renew High Church populist, festive and educational practices which have resulted in an increase in their congregations against current trends. The failing cathedrals are the ones stuck in an out-dated liberalism or anti-ritualistic evangelicalism. And indeed, one can assume that the more successful cathedrals, like St Albans, led by the highly creative (and otherwise famous) Jeffrey John, would have responded much more successfully to the unprecedented events now unfolding on the steps of St Paul's.

The latter itself, has participated positively in this new trend, yet is still infected with a countervailing inherited sclerosis which has crippled it in the present instance. This sclerosis has in part to do with the negative aspect of cathedral independence - an inability always to think outside the narrow remit of cathedral duty: the daily round of evensong and the shepherding of tourists.

It is at this point that one can suggest that, especially in the a joined-up global world, the Anglican Church actually requires rather more hierarchical oversight and willingness of bishops to intervene - even if this risks rocking the boat of notorious Anglican diversity. This is required in order to maintain a genuine Catholic openness to all parishioners up and down the country in terms of liturgy, pastoral care and social involvement, never mind public response to sensitive political issues.  Thus is the present instance, perhaps the bishops of London and Canterbury think that it is their prime duty to sustain inner-church governmental protocols. But if that is the case, then they are making the most massive mistake, whose fallout could be considerable. The current event is a unique exception and it requires an entirely exceptional response from the highest quarters.

But the sclerosis and the all-too-sad fumbling has also a deeper long-term cause, which is the second point where the English polity interlocks with global monetary iniquity. St Paul's as the Cathedral of the established Church in the London diocese stands ambivalent guard over the frontier between 'London' in the narrower and the wider sense. The decadence into which medieval civic arrangements have fallen in modern times has in part to be laid at the door of the Church itself, because too often (though there are many crucial exceptions) Anglicanism has abandoned a genuinely Christian thinking about economic and social arrangements. This thinking was the heart of the original City of London and without it we are left - and with an exponential increase in recent times - only with fancy-dress concealing an empty pursuit of greed.

And while very many London clerics have over the years made an honourable social witness, the fact is that the higher echelons of the London diocese have tended to be complicit with just this flummery and too much in love with a power that they can only touch through its trappings. Indeed at this point it is sham ritual that has frequently blinded their eyes to genuine symbolic resonance.

Now this inherited blindness is exposed for the world to see - a most spectacular blindness, if one may venture a paradox.

But there is one who certainly will not, in his heart share this blindness, and who must now exhibit his heart to the world in order to turn disaster into opportunity. The new decision by the Bishop of London and the cathedral canons after all not to side with the City in seeking legal action against the occupiers is to be greatly welcomed. However, it is the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, so far uncontaminated by muddle and fluster over this issue, who can alone still seize a golden opportunity to put his church centre-stage in the debate we now need about the long-term implications of the English and London polity and the English established Church in the current toils of extreme capitalism.