This is the first systematic attempt to chart the evolving political views of contemporary Church of England clergy. The article is based upon a comparative quantitative analysis and synthesis of eighteen national and four local surveys conducted between 1979 and 2004. Ministerial opinions on the state's influence on the Church and the Church's influence on the state are both considered. Ten specific conclusions are drawn. While the clergy generally cling to the concept of an Established Church, they are very critical of some of the traditional manifestations of that establishment. They also mostly think it highly appropriate for the Church to intervene in the world of party politics, and not simply on moral issues. In this they are positioned ahead of the thinking of many of the committed Anglican laity, for whom a degree of separation of religion and politics remains the ideal. The academic, ecclesiastical and political implications of these findings are briefly explored.

Nigeria is the most populous nation in Africa. It is also divided on religious grounds with a predominantly Muslim north and a mainly Christian south. Christians make up the majority of the population (52.6 per cent) compared with Muslims (41 per cent). The 17 million Anglicans are the second largest Christian group. With its large and religiously divided population Nigeria is one of the main countries in Africa, and the world, where large numbers of Muslims and Christians live and interact together. In today's world where the ‘Christian’ West and the Islamic world are becoming increasingly polarized, the history of Anglican/Muslim relations in Nigeria provides a key case study with important implications for Anglicans all over the world.

Austin Farrer is highly praised but curiously under-read. Despite being recognized as ‘possibly the greatest Anglican mind of the 20th century,’ his influence in discussions of Anglican identity and theology is almost non-existent. As an attempt to remedy this deficit, this paper provides a sketch of Farrer's life and work, and then presents him as a specifically Anglican theologian through considering a sermon, a meditation on the Apostles' Creed, and a set of lectures to Oxford undergraduates. But presenting Farrer as ‘a specifically Anglican theologian’ is problematic if we cannot agree on the nature of Anglican theology. Therefore, the paper concludes by referencing a debate between Stephen Sykes and Paul Avis on this question, and asks if Farrer can function as a paradigm for contemporary Anglican theologians.

This short piece seeks to offer a theological framing to the issues raised by Garth Blake in his very fine article ‘Child Protection and the Anglican Church of Australia’. What are some of the theological issues behind the current state of affairs with regard to child protection, and the church's attempts to remedy past failures to protect the children in its care? Very briefly I want to mention several clusters of theological issues: responsibility, or the duty of care; forgiveness and betrayal of trust; sin and scapegoating; gospel and law; and the problem of meaning.

The emergence of Scriptural Reasoning (SR) as a movement and a society of scholars was made possible by the hospitality, influence and cohort of two Anglican theologians, the late Revd Daniel Hardy and Professor David Ford. In this essay, I offer a Jewish commentary on several Anglican theological dispositions that might contribute to this hospitality: among them are ‘found theology’ (as I label it), responsiveness to the powers of divine attraction, concern to repair obstructions to the healing work of the Spirit, and attentiveness to Scripture as host and source of reparative reasoning. While the primary subject of the essay is a species of Christian theology, the method of the essay emerges from a recent approach to Jewish philosophy we call ‘textual reasoning’ (TR), one of the antecedents of SR. In the style of TR, I encounter theology as a ‘disposition’, or mode of practice, displayed in particular in practices of reading and interpreting Scripture and of responding to the call of Scripture in societal action. The essay is structured as a series of brief accounts of Anglican theological dispositions, each one followed by a Jewish ‘commentary’, culminating in a sample of Anglican-Jewish dialogue as it might be overheard within a session of scriptural reasoning.

These are difficult times for the Anglican Communion. The crisis in global Anglicanism is not so much over human sexuality but rather over questions of identity and authority. Some church leaders are advocating structural and canonical solutions to maintain the integrity of the Anglican Communion. A missiological perspective, however, sees communion as a gift from God fostered through relationships in mission across difference. The Decade of Evangelism and pan-Anglican efforts to address international debt and the HIV/AIDS pandemic are examples of communion in mission relationships. A missiological ecclesiology for the Anglican Communion will lift up, celebrate, and encourage more meaningful relationships in God's mission. The Anglican Congresses of 1908, 1954 and 1963 are expressions of such a missiological ecclesiology. The proposed 2008 Anglican Congress or Gathering will unite and foster a deeper sense of communion across Anglicanism through enlivened mission relationships.

This essay discusses the political thought of Rowan Williams in the context of his leading influences and wider theology. It shows the continuity in his political writing from his early days as a radical to his frequent political speeches and lectures as Archbishop of Canterbury. The over-riding theme is that of ‘interactive pluralism’, which seeks to establish a form of politics with a very weak system of sovereignty. This influenced his 2008 lecture on ‘Civil and Religious Law in England: a Religious Perspective’, which suggested a limited role for parallel religious law codes alongside those of the state. Although this lecture was subject to much criticism, particularly in the popular press, it nevertheless displays a consistency with his strongly disestablishmentarian inclinations, which give a large amount of space to ‘first-level’ institutions in both decision-making and community formation. A healthy society is established through dispute and dialogue between such groups rather than strong centralized power.

The National Evangelical Anglican Congress which took place at Keele University in April 1967 is widely acknowledged as a major watershed for the evangelical movement in the Church of England. This paper offers a fresh analysis of the event, based on detailed archival research. It argues that there was a decisive attitudinal shift at the congress, driven especially by the younger generation – from piety to policy, conservatism to radicalism, homogeneity to diversity, and exclusivism to ecumenism. It shows how in these four areas the Keele Congress established a new agenda for Anglican evangelicalism, a legacy which still continues today.

For some years now the Anglican Church in Nigeria has been contending with the problems arising from the creation of missionary dioceses. Many retreats for the bishops in the missionary dioceses have been held from late 2000 to date, in an effort to find solutions to the problems, yet the problems have continued unabated. The situation provokes concern and interest in public discourse and intellectual circles. This study examines critically the problems of missionary dioceses and the effects of such problems on the workers and their families therein using a historical approach and both primary and secondary sources. The findings show that some of the missionary dioceses were created with poor funding and facilities as there was no adequate preparation for their creation. The study therefore recommends that the Church of Nigeria should support the missionary dioceses to stabilize.

This article examines the possible use of ‘virtual’ Eucharists in the Anglican Church of Australia in a time of a global pandemic such as exists in the world in 2020 with the spread of coronavirus or COVID-19. The changing nature of modern communication is considered in the context of the possibility of the use of a ‘virtual’ Eucharist, where a priest in one place with a set of bread and wine, consecrates the bread and wine, while at the same time a person in their own home consumes another set of bread and wine with the assumption that second set of bread and wine is also consecrated. Suggestions for and discussion of the use of a ‘virtual’ Eucharist in two dioceses of the Anglican Church of Australia are discussed with a consideration of published material by episcopal leaders. Biblical, theological and constitutional perspectives are then considered in relation to a ‘virtual’ Eucharist before the recommendation is made that ‘virtual’ Eucharists are not considered as appropriate at any time, including during a global COVID-19 pandemic, in the Anglican Church of Australia. Several alternatives to a ‘virtual’ Eucharist are considered which would allow people to obtain spiritual nourishment by other means.

The uniformity of worship which we accept as part of the Anglican tradition was an entirely new idea when it was introduced in the sixteenth century. Few had asked for a single book of worship, but it was enforced by top-down, often draconian measures. This article traces the changing circumstances which have led to the loss of such uniformity not only in England, but in the worldwide Anglican Communion. In this process the equation of Anglican identity with a particular liturgical ethos may have disappeared. That process can be illustrated from the experience of the last Lambeth Conference.

Inspired by the objectives of the Church of England’s Living Ministry Research Project (to understand the factors that enable clergy to flourish and to understand how these factors vary according to person, background, etc.), the present analyses were designed to test the capacity of an individual differences approach to the science of clergy well-being for delivering such objectives. The specific case in point concerned understanding the connections between migration to digital technology and changes in clergy well-being during the pandemic. The data demonstrated how the individual differences approach both offered explanatory power and provided insights into how personal support and professional development could be most effectively structured and targeted.

Since the Anglican Church in England and Wales began to build schools long before the state developed machinery to do so, around a quarter of all primary schools remain connected with the Anglican Church. The church school inspection system maintains that Anglican schools have a distinctive ethos. The Student Voice Project argues that school ethos is generated by the implicit collective values, beliefs and behaviours of the students, and was designed to give explicit voice to the students in response to six specific areas of school life identified by the Anglican school inspection criteria as relevant to school ethos. Drawing on data provide by 8,111 year-five and year-six students attending Church in Wales primary schools, the present study reports on the six ethos measures and on significant differences reported by female and male students, and by year-five and year-six students.

In recent years the Five Marks of Mission have become the latest in a long series of mission ‘slogans’ in the Anglican Communion, but little attention has been paid to their origin or theological presuppositions. This paper traces the development of an Anglican definition of mission from the 1984 meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council, at which a four-fold definition was first put forth, to the present use of the Five Marks of Mission across many parts of the Communion. The strong influence of evangelical mission thinking on this definition is demonstrated, as is the contributions from African Anglican bishops. Anglican mission thinking has shifted from emphasizing pragmatism and coordination to providing a vision for the Communion to live into. Mission thinking has been a site of genuine cross-cultural interchange among Anglicans from diverse backgrounds.

This essay will examine the contribution of pastoral (professional) supervision in enabling and ensuring a safe church. Pastoral supervision is the brave, safe space where clergy (and ministry workers) reflect on their ministry practice in a regular, planned supervision session. The present article emerges from a decade of training pastoral supervisors and consultation across the national Anglican Church during 2019 based on recommendations made by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. It concludes that the properly Christian way for pastoral supervision to change the culture of the Church is christological: a rigorous grounding of its theory and practice in the story of Jesus Christ.

This essay argues that modern society lacks a vision of the common good, which prevents education from having an adequate telos or goal. It calls for a restoration of the language of virtue and the ethical tradition of Aristotle and Aquinas. The Anglican parish and the church primary or elementary school are examined as sites where virtue ethics is still active: particularly in the intercessory work of parish prayer, and in the mimetic approach to learning employed with younger children. The article then addresses ways in which these institutions depend upon what C.S. Lewis called ‘deeper magic’ of a transcendent reality, and ways in which the school especially might develop further a pedagogy of the virtues using J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter stories as exemplars. Finally, it argues for a dimension of the beautiful in a recovery of an education in Christian virtue.

For more than twenty years the subject of authority has been in the forefront of discussions in the Anglican Communion and in ecumenical conversations. Authority in the Church was treated by the first Anglican Roman Catholic Commission. Both Communions recognized convergence in the Commission's reports but asked for further work. The most recent report, The Gift of Authority, is still being studied. It contains sharp challenges to both churches about their own exercise of authority. It is one thing to agree ideal statements about authority. It is quite another to move into visible unity with another church whose exercise of authority appears at odds with the ideal. If the two Communions can respond to these challenges then the suspicions that each has of the other will be alleviated and the move to visible unity made more possible. This article examines the content of the ARCIC reports and the challenges put to both Communions, arguing that there is much at stake in this conversation both for the internal life of the two Communions as well as for a life of communion in the future.

The 2014 publication of the Episcopal Church’s resource for daily prayer, Daily Prayer for All Seasons, invites reflection on recent developments in provision for everyday services around the Anglican Communion. Not only is the new resource considerably different from the material it complements in the Book of Common Prayer 1979, it also represents a departure from a certain commonality that has emerged in material from around the Communion since 1979. While this article does not map those developments in detail, it does chart some of the shifts occurring in various provinces and relates that survey to current discussions about ‘Anglican identity and liturgical diversity’. The article serves both as an introduction to Daily Prayer for All Seasons and as a wider reflection on Anglican forms of everyday services in the period from 1979–2014.

Recent events in the USA and the UK reveal how theological education is changing, reflecting wider issues in global higher education as well as local and ecclesial concerns. Those responsible for seminary leadership and governance might pay closer to attention to those wider developments, and not neglect wider benefits to the Church of theological discourse generated in these institutions beyond vocational training.

The Anglican Church in Tanzania emerged from the work of the Universities’ Mission to Central Africa (UMCA) and the Australian Church Missionary Society (CMSA). The Anglican missions had goals which stood against colonialism and supported the victory of nationalism. Using archives and interviews as sources, this article considers the roles and reaction of the Anglican missions in the struggle for political independence in Tanganyika and Zanzibar, the effects of independence on the missions and the Church more broadly, and the responses of the missions to ujamaa in Tanzania.