12 - The Church and Other Communities of Faith

Summary

This chapter explores relations between the Church in Wales and other faith communities. 1920 saw the formation of the Church in Wales as a new province of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The following decades witnessed numerous Welsh contributions to global Anglicanism, including its leadership by a former Welsh bishop, proposals for an Anglican Communion Covenant, and recognition of principles of canon law common to the churches of the Anglican Communion. After 1920, ecumenical relations with other churches in Wales improved gradually, and in the 1970s the church entered a covenant for the union of churches in Wales and today it is an active in Churches Together in Wales. However, from the 1930s, the church entered international ecumenical agreements with churches of other traditions, such as the Old Catholics, the united churches of South India and North India, and, in the 1990s, Lutheran churches of Nordic and Baltic lands. The chapter explores critically the value and challenges posed by these agreements and the role played by leaders within the Church in Wales in their formation. The past twenty or so years have also seen the development of dialogue between the Church in Wales and other major world religions, driven in part by the increasingly pluralistic nature of Welsh society.