Anglican Communion

The Anglican Communion traces much of its growth to the older mission organisations of the Church of England such as the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (founded 1698), the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (founded 1701) and the Church Missionary Society (founded 1799). The Church of England (which until the 20th century included the Church in Wales) initially separated from the Roman Catholic Church in 1534 in the reign of Henry VIII, reunited briefly in 1555 under Mary I and then separated again in 1570 under Elizabeth I (the Roman Catholic Church excommunicated Elizabeth I in 1570 in response to the Act of Supremacy 1559). The Church of England has always thought of itself not as a new foundation but rather as a reformed continuation of the ancient "English Church" (Ecclesia Anglicana) and a reassertion of that church's rights. As such it was a distinctly national phenomenon. The Church of Scotland was formed as a separate church from the Roman Catholic Church as a result of the Scottish Reformation in 1560 and the later formation of the Scottish Episcopal Church began in 1582 (in the reign of James VI) over disagreements about the role of bishops. The Church of England was the established church not only in England, but in its trans-Oceanic colonies. Thus the only member churches of the present Anglican Communion existing by the mid-18th century were the Church of England, its closely linked sister church the Church of Ireland (which also separated from Roman Catholicism under Henry VIII) and the Scottish Episcopal Church which for parts of the 17th and 18th centuries was partially underground (it was suspected of Jacobite sympathies). The oldest-surviving Anglican church building outside the British Isles is St Peter's Church in St. George's, Bermuda, established in 1612 (though the actual building had to be rebuilt several times over the following century). This is also the oldest surviving non-Roman Catholic church in the New World. It remained part of the Church of England until 1978 when the Anglican Church of Bermuda was formed. Global spread of Anglicanism in Helsinki, Finland, in June 2013 The enormous expansion in the 18th and 19th centuries of the British Empire brought Anglicanism along with it. At first all these colonial churches were under the jurisdiction of the bishop of London. After the American Revolution, the parishes in the newly independent United States found it necessary to break formally from a church whose supreme governor was (and remains) the British monarch. Thus they formed their own dioceses and national church, the Episcopal Church in the United States of America, in a mostly amicable separation. At about the same time, in the colonies which remained linked to the crown, the Church of England began to appoint colonial bishops. In 1787, Charles Inglis (Bishop of Nova Scotia) was appointed with jurisdiction over all of British North America; in time several more colleagues were appointed to sees in other provinces in present-day Canada. In 1814, a bishop of Calcutta was appointed. In 1824 the first bishop was sent to the West Indies. And in 1836 Australia received its first Anglican bishop. By 1840 there were still only ten colonial bishops in the Church of England; but this small beginning quickly facilitated the growth of Anglicanism around the world. In 1841, a "Colonial Bishoprics Council" was set up and soon many more dioceses were created. In time, it became natural to group these into provinces and a metropolitan bishop was appointed for each province. Although it had at first been somewhat established in many colonies, in 1861 it was ruled that, except where specifically established, the Church of England had just the same legal position as any other church. Thus a colonial bishop and colonial diocese was by nature quite a different thing from their counterparts back home. In time bishops came to be appointed locally rather than from England and eventually national synods began to pass ecclesiastical legislation independent of England. A crucial step in the development of the modern communion was the idea of the Lambeth Conferences (discussed above). These conferences demonstrated that the bishops of disparate churches could manifest the unity of the church in their episcopal collegiality despite the absence of universal legal ties. Some bishops were initially reluctant to attend, fearing that the meeting would declare itself a council with power to legislate for the church; but it agreed to pass only advisory resolutions. These Lambeth Conferences have been held roughly every ten years since 1878 (the second such conference) and remain the most visible coming-together of the whole communion. The Lambeth Conference of 1998 included what has been seen by Philip Jenkins and others as a "watershed in global Christianity". The 1998 Lambeth Conference considered the issue of the theology of same-sex attraction in relation to human sexuality. At this 1998 conference, for the first time in centuries, the primates of churches in many developing regions—including some from Africa, Asia and Latin America—prevailed over the bishops of more prosperous countries (many from the US, Canada and the UK) who had supported a more progressive interpretation of Anglican doctrine. Seen in this light, 1998 is a date that marked the shift from a West-dominated Christianity to one wherein the growing churches of "the two-thirds world" are predominant. 21st-century de facto schisms Many of the provinces in developed countries have continued to adopt more liberal stances on sexuality and other issues, resulting in a number of de facto schisms, such as the series of splits which led to the creation of the Anglican Church in North America. Many churches are now in full communion with only some other church members of the Communion, but are not with others; however, most churches that have historically been members continue to claim to be part of the Anglican Communion. On 20 February 2023, following the decision of the Church of England to allow priests to bless same-sex partnerships, during regularly scheduled worship services, ten communion provinces and Anglican realignment churches, formed into the new Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches, released a statement stating that they had declared "impaired communion" with the Church of England and no longer recognised Justin Welby as "first among equals" among the bishops of the communion. On 16 October 2025, the chairman of the Global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans, Laurent Mbanda, declared the future creation of a "Global Anglican Communion" independent from the See of Canterbury but also asserted "[they] have not left the Anglican Communion; [they] are the Anglican Communion." "The statement outlining that plan was signed by one person, Rwanda Archbishop Laurent Mbanda, who serves as chair of GAFCON's primate council." Following the announcement, Mbanda stated that the announcement of the "Global Anglican Communion" was "closer to a rebrand than a new organization" and that they are reforming the existing Anglican Communion. Bishops affiliated with GAFCON, in Kenya and Congo, responded that their provinces plan to remain a part of the existing structures of the Anglican Communion. On March 3-4, 2026, meeting in Abuja, GAFCON member churches confirmed their intention to remain a part of the Anglican Communion, rejecting the word "schism" and framing their efforts as a reorganization and "continuity." GAFCON had announced their plan to move forward with electing a "rival" primus inter pares to the Archbishop of Canterbury, with some member churches continuing to oppose the ordination of women as bishops. On March 5, 2026, GAFCON decided not to elect a "rival" primus inter pares to the Archbishop of Canterbury, opting instead to elect a "Global Anglican Council." As of 2025, GAFCON claims to represent upwards of 85% of the world's practising Anglicans. Peer-reviewed research from 2015 and 2016 indicates that the GAFCON-aligned provinces represent closer to 45% of practising Anglicans and just over 54% of members baptised in any of the provinces of the Anglican Communion. ==Differences and controversies==

Some effects of the Anglican Communion's dispersed authority have been differences of opinion (and conflicts) arising over divergent practices and doctrine in the various parts of the communion. Disputes that had been confined to the Church of England could be dealt with legislatively in that realm, but as the communion spread into new countries and territories and across disparate cultures, controversies sometimes multiplied and intensified. These controversies have generally been of two types: liturgical and social. Ordination of women Rapid social change and the dissipation of British cultural hegemony over its former colonies contributed to disputes over the role of women, and the parameters of marriage and divorce. In the late 1970s, the Continuing Anglican movement produced a number of new church bodies in opposition to women's ordination, prayer book changes, and the new understandings concerning marriage. As of 2024, some provinces of the communion, representing approximately 3% of Anglicans worldwide, do not ordain women as deacons, priests, or bishops; two ordain women only as deacons, 16 ordain women as deacons and priests but not as bishops, and 22 provinces, representing about "two thirds of Anglicanism," ordain women as deacons, priests, and bishops. As of 2024, three provinces of the Anglican Communion (South East Asia, Papua New Guinea, and Melanesia) do not ordain women as deacons, priests, or bishops. On 28 January 2026, Sarah Mullally, previously bishop of London, was elected as archbishop of Canterbury, becoming the first woman to hold the see and act as the "first among equals" within the Anglican Communion. GAFCON Primates Council chairman (Laurent Mbanda) claimed a predominant reservation against women's ordination to the episcopacy. Anglo-Catholicism The first such controversy of note concerned that of the growing influence of the Catholic Revival manifested in the Tractarian and so-called Ritualist controversies of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This controversy produced the Free Church of England and, in the United States and Canada, the Reformed Episcopal Church. Abortion and euthanasia While individual Anglicans and member churches within the communion differ over the circumstances in which abortion should or should not be permitted, Lambeth Conference resolutions have consistently held to a conservative view on the issue. The 1930 conference, the first to be held since the initial legalisation of abortion in Europe (in Russia in 1920), stated: The 1958 conference's Family in Contemporary Society report affirmed the following position on abortion and was commended by the 1968 conference: The subsequent Lambeth Conference, in 1978, made no change to this position and commended the need for "programmes at diocesan level, involving both men and women ... to emphasise the sacredness of all human life, the moral issues inherent in clinical abortion, and the possible implications of genetic engineering." In the context of debates around and proposals for the legalisation of euthanasia and assisted suicide, the 1998 conference affirmed that "life is God-given and has intrinsic sanctity, significance and worth". Same-sex unions and LGBT clergy More recently, disagreements over homosexuality have strained the unity of the communion as well as its relationships with other Christian denominations, leading to another round of withdrawals from the Anglican Communion. Some churches were founded outside the Anglican Communion in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, largely in opposition to the ordination of openly homosexual bishops and other clergy and are usually referred to as belonging to the Anglican realignment movement, or else as "orthodox" Anglicans. These disagreements were especially noted when The Episcopal Church (US) consecrated an openly gay bishop in a same-sex relationship, Gene Robinson, in 2003, which led some Episcopalians to defect and found the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA); then, the debate reignited when the Church of England agreed to allow clergy to enter into same-sex civil partnerships, as long as they remained celibate, in 2005. The Church of Nigeria opposed the Episcopal Church's decision as well as the Church of England's approval for celibate civil partnerships. According to the BBC, "The more liberal provinces that are open to changing Church doctrine on marriage in order to allow for same-sex unions include Brazil, Canada, New Zealand, Scotland, South India, South Africa, the US and Wales". In 2023, the Church of England announced that it will authorise "prayers of thanksgiving, dedication and for God's blessing for same-sex couples". The Church of England also permits clergy to enter into same-sex civil partnerships. In 2024, the Church of England's General Synod voted to support allowing clergy to enter in civil same-sex marriages. In 2023, the Anglican Church of Southern Africa's bishops approved the drafting of prayers that could be said with same-sex couples and the draft prayers were published for consideration in 2024. The Church of Ireland has no official position on civil unions, and one senior cleric has entered into a same-sex civil partnership. The Church of Ireland recognised that it will "treat civil partners the same as spouses". The Anglican Church of Australia does not have an official position on homosexuality, and each diocese is allowed to bless same-sex couples if they choose. In 2025, the Church in Wales elected Cherry Vann as the Archbishop of Wales, making her the first woman to serve as Archbishop in the United Kingdom and the first openly LGBTQ and partnered bishop to be a Primate within the Anglican Communion. The conservative Anglican churches encouraging the realignment movement are more concentrated in the Global South. For example, the Anglican Church of Kenya, the Church of Nigeria and the Church of Uganda have opposed homosexuality. GAFCON, a fellowship of conservative Anglican churches, has appointed "missionary bishops" in response to the disagreements with the perceived liberalisation in the Anglican churches in North America and Europe. In 2023, ten archbishops within the Anglican Communion and two breakaway churches in North America and Brazil from the Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches (GSFA) declared a state of impaired communion with the Church of England and announced that they would no longer recognise the archbishop of Canterbury as the "first among equals" among the bishops in the Anglican Communion. However, in the same statement, the ten archbishops said that they would not leave the Anglican Communion. In 2024, the GSFA met again establishing "a new structure," no longer recognising the Archbishop of Canterbury "as the de facto leader" of the Anglican Communion, but the GSFA reiterated that they intend to remain in the Anglican Communion. In 2025, after the Church in Wales elected the first openly lesbian and partnered primate in the Anglican Communion, the GSFA criticized the appointment. Debates about social theology and ethics have occurred at the same time as debates on prayer book revision and the acceptable grounds for achieving full communion with non-Anglican churches. ==Ecclesiology, polity and ethos==

The Anglican Communion has no official legal existence nor any governing structure that might exercise authority over the member churches. There is an Anglican Communion Office in London, under the aegis of the archbishop of Canterbury, but it serves only in a supporting and organisational role. The communion is held together by a shared history, expressed in its ecclesiology, polity and ethos, and also by participation in international consultative bodies. Three elements have been important in holding the communion together: first, the shared ecclesial structure of the component churches, manifested in an episcopal polity maintained through the apostolic succession of bishops and synodical government; second, the principle of belief expressed in worship, investing importance in approved prayer books and their rubrics; and third, the historical documents and the writings of early Anglican divines that have influenced the ethos of the communion. Originally, the Church of England was self-contained and relied for its unity and identity on its own history, its traditional legal and episcopal structure, and its status as an established church of the state. As such, Anglicanism was from the outset a movement with an explicitly episcopal polity, a characteristic that has been vital in maintaining the unity of the communion by conveying the episcopate's role in manifesting visible catholicity and ecumenism. Early in its development following the English Reformation, Anglicanism developed a vernacular prayer book, called the Book of Common Prayer. Unlike other traditions, Anglicanism has never been governed by a magisterium nor by appeal to one founding theologian, nor by an extra-credal summary of doctrine (such as the Westminster Confession of the Presbyterian churches). Instead, Anglicans have typically appealed to the Book of Common Prayer (1662) and its offshoots as a guide to Anglican theology and practise. This has had the effect of inculcating in Anglican identity and confession the principle of ("the law of praying [is] the law of believing"). Protracted conflict through the 17th century, with radical Protestants on the one hand and Roman Catholics who recognised the primacy of the Pope on the other, resulted in an association of churches that was both deliberately vague about doctrinal principles, yet bold in developing parameters of acceptable deviation. These parameters were most clearly articulated in the various rubrics of the successive prayer books, as well as the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion (1563). These articles have historically shaped and continue to direct the ethos of the communion, an ethos reinforced by its interpretation and expansion by such influential early theologians such as Richard Hooker, Lancelot Andrewes and John Cosin. With the expansion of the British Empire and the growth of Anglicanism outside Great Britain and Ireland, the communion sought to establish new vehicles of unity. The first major expressions of this were the Lambeth Conferences of the communion's bishops, first convened in 1867 by Charles Longley, the archbishop of Canterbury. From the beginning, these were not intended to displace the autonomy of the emerging provinces of the communion, but to "discuss matters of practical interest, and pronounce what we deem expedient in resolutions which may serve as safe guides to future action". Chicago Lambeth Quadrilateral One of the enduringly influential early resolutions of the conference was the so-called Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral of 1888. Its intent was to provide the basis for discussions of reunion with the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches, but it had the ancillary effect of establishing parameters of Anglican identity. It establishes four principles with these words: Instruments of communion The archbishop of Canterbury's role is strictly symbolic and unifying, while the communion's three international bodies are consultative and collaborative; their resolutions have no legal effect on the autonomous provinces of the communion. However, in combination those four bodies do function as "instruments of communion", because all churches of the communion participate in them. In order of antiquity, they are: (the episcopal throne in Canterbury Cathedral, Kent), seat of the archbishop of Canterbury in their role as head of the Anglican Communion • The archbishop of Canterbury functions as the spiritual head of the communion. The archbishop is the focus of unity, because no Anglican church has historically claimed membership in the communion without being in communion with the archbishop of Canterbury. The current archbishop-designate is Sarah Mullally. • The Lambeth Conference (first held in 1867) is the oldest Anglican international consultative body. It is a forum for bishops of the communion to reinforce unity and collegiality, to discuss matters of mutual concern, and to pass resolutions intended to act as guidelines to the individual churches. It is held roughly every ten years and invitation is by the archbishop of Canterbury. • The Anglican Consultative Council Because there is no binding authority in the Anglican Communion, these international bodies are vehicles for consultation and persuasion. In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, they have debated issues of conformity in doctrine, discipline, worship and ethics. The most controversial issues have related to gender and sexuality: some provinces of the communion (particularly in Africa and Asia) object to the changing acceptance of LGBTQ+ individuals (particularly by the North American and European churches). This has led to disagreements on the churches' differing practices of blessing same-sex unions, ordaining and consecrating priests and bishops who are (or have been) in same-sex relationships, and to the process by which changes were undertaken. Some churches have also objected to the ordination of female priests and bishops. This debate is known as the Anglican realignment. Those who objected condemned these changes as unscriptural, unilateral, and lacking prior agreement from the communion. The American Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada responded that their actions had been undertaken after lengthy scriptural and theological reflection, were legal according to their own canons and constitutions, and made after extensive consultation with the provinces of the communion. The Primates' Meeting voted to request those two churches withdraw their delegates from the 2005 meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council. Canada and the United States decided to attend the meeting but without exercising their right to vote. They were not expelled or suspended; there is no mechanism in this voluntary association to suspend or expel an independent province of the communion. Because membership is based on a province's communion with Canterbury, expulsion would require the archbishop of Canterbury's refusal to be in communion with the affected jurisdictions. Following the recommendation of the Windsor Report, Rowan Williams (the then archbishop of Canterbury) established a working group to examine the feasibility of an Anglican covenant which would articulate the conditions for communion in some fashion. Nairobi-Cairo proposals In 2025, the Inter-Anglican Standing Committee on Unity, Faith and Order within the Anglican Communion proposed a series of changes to the Instruments of Communion that would result "in service of a de-centred, polycentric understanding of the mission of the Church. . . The leadership of the Communion should look like the Communion," according to the report. The Nairobi-Cairo proposals suggests amending the definition of membership in the Anglican Communion to no longer include reference to being in full communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury; instead, the reference to Canterbury would be a historical connection. Additionally, there would be a rotating presidency of the Anglican Consultative Council among the five regions of the communion, and the role of calling the Lambeth Conference and Primates' Meeting, traditionally held by the Archbishop of Canterbury, would include greater input from the Primates' Standing Committee. This has both been described as an effort to further decolonize the structures of the Anglican Communion as well as an effort to hold together autonomous member churches with disagreements. ==Organisation==

Provinces The Anglican Communion, which currently is experiencing impaired communion and division, consists of forty-two autonomous provinces each with its own primate and governing structure and of five extra-provincials under the metropolitan authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury. These provinces may take the form of national churches (such as in Canada, Uganda, or Japan) or a collection of nations (such as the West Indies, Central Africa, or Southeast Asia). The Church of England Yearbook reported 93,511,730 members of the Anglican Communion in 2024. Excluding the United churches in South Asia, the World Christian Database, published in 2021 and produced by the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, and the World Christian Encyclopedia, published in 2020 by Edinburgh University Press, estimated that there were approximately 97,399,000 Anglicans in 2020 with 63,556,000 in Africa, 24,400,000 in Europe, 4,565,000 in Oceania, 2,689,000 in Northern America, 1,230,000 in Asia, and 959,000 in Latin America. The United Churches in South Asia include over 5,000,000 in South India, 2,300,000 in North India, 1,900,000 in Pakistan, and 22,600 in Bangladesh. Extraprovincial churches In addition to the forty-two provinces, there are five extraprovincial churches under the metropolitical authority of the archbishop of Canterbury. Former provinces New provinces in formation In September 2020, the archbishop of Canterbury announced that he had asked the bishops of the Church of Ceylon to begin planning for the formation of an autonomous province of Ceylon, so as to end his current position as metropolitan of the two dioceses in that country. In 2023, the Church of the Province of Central Africa approved a plan to subdivide into three new national provinces, so that churches in Malawi, Zambia, and Zimbabwe would become independent of each other, while churches in Botswana could form a fourth national province or be integrated into one of the other three national provinces being formed. In relation to the Church of the Province of West Africa, it was announced that "the process is in motion for Ghana to become an autonomous province, once it has fulfilled the conditions and guidelines set by the Anglican Communion." Churches in full communion In addition to other member churches, the churches of the Anglican Communion are in full communion with the Old Catholic churches of the Union of Utrecht and the Scandinavian Lutheran churches of the Porvoo Communion in Europe, the India-based Malankara Mar Thoma Syrian and Malabar Independent Syrian churches and the Philippine Independent Church, also known as the Aglipayan Church. ==Ecumenical relations==

The churches of the Anglican Communion have traditionally held that ordination in the historic episcopate is a core element in the validity of clerical ordinations. The Roman Catholic Church, however, does not recognise Anglican orders (see Apostolicae curae). Some Eastern Orthodox churches have issued statements to the effect that Anglican orders could be accepted, yet have reordained former Anglican clergy; other Eastern Orthodox churches have rejected Anglican orders altogether. In 1922, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Meletius IV, issued a statement recognising that Anglican Holy Orders, through apostolic succession, possess the same validity as those of the Roman, Old Catholic, and Armenian Churches. By 1946, five autocephalous Orthodox jurisdictions recognised the validity of Anglican Holy Orders, including Constantinople, Alexandria, Jerusalem, Cyprus, and Romania as well as the autonomous Church of Sinai. This recognition, however, was conditional because from an Eastern Orthodox standpoint, no Holy Orders outside of their church could truly be valid without a complete church reunion. these recognitions have "not been rescinded." Orthodox bishop Kallistos Ware explains this apparent discrepancy as follows: ==See also==