Routledge Growth and Decline in the Anglican Communion: 1980 to the Present (Routledge Contemporary Ecclesiology)

The Anglican Communion is one of the largest Christian denominations in the world. Growth and Decline in the Anglican Communion is the first study of its dramatic growth and decline in the years since 1980. An international team of leading researchers based across five continents provides a global overview of Anglicanism alongside twelve detailed case studies. The case studies stretch from Singapore to England, Nigeria to the USA and mostly focus on non-western Anglicanism. This book is a critical resource for students and scholars seeking an understanding of the past, present and future of the Anglican Church. More broadly, the study offers insight into debates surrounding secularisation in the contemporary world. Review The Secretary General of the Anglican Communion, Archbishop Josiah Idowo-Fearon commended Growth and Decline in the Anglican Communion, 1980 to the Present, published by Routledge. ‘If this book is not in the…library, it ought to be’, said Archbishop Josiah. ‘This is a truly valuable book. In a collection of outstanding essays, the contributors seek to find firm ground for statements about growth and decline in the Anglican Communion, one of the world’s largest religious institutions. At every stage, what they find repeatedly challenges conventional assumptions, and also raises fundamental questions that demand to be applied to other global churches. This is truly eye-opening. I cannot speak too highly of this excellent volume.’ Philip Jenkins, Distinguished Professor of History, Baylor University, USA ‘This volume is a veritable goldmine. It contains a huge amount of mostly numerical information on the Anglican Communion in all its fullness. Quite rightly it eschews easy generalizations, probing instead the complex and evolving mosaic that constitutes modern Anglicanism. Almost every reader will be surprised about something. I recommend this book very warmly.’ Grace Davie, Professor emeritus of Sociology, University of Exeter, UK ‘To be "Anglican" once meant to be Christian in a peculiarly Church of England fashion, and the extent of "Anglicanism" could be neatly mapped onto the boundaries of the British Empire or Commonwealth. This timely and wide-ranging volume demonstrates that, happily, neither of these generalisations any longer applies. It shows how the Anglican Communion since 1980 displays a complex narrative of rise and fall in its different parts, and now exhibits a fascinating range of variations on the historic theme of what it means to be Anglican.’ Brian Stanley, Professor of World Christianity, University of Edinburgh, UK ‘Numerical church growth and bolstering congregational numbers continues to preoccupy many mainline denominations in the developed world. As this important study shows, church growth is a complex and nuanced phenomena, and needs to be studied with care if it is to be understood. David Goodhew’s continued work in this field offers new perspectives in an arena that is inherently complicated – and he brings to this a clear-sighted vision. For all who research church growth – as theoreticians or practitioners – this major study makes a valuable contribution to a burgeoning field of enquiry that sits between missiology and ecclesiology.’ Martyn Percy, Dean of Christ Church, Oxford, UK ‘This deepening of the analysis of global Anglicanism is refreshing and welcome for its challenge to the popular presentation of declining North versus growing South. This nuanced approach starts outside the North/West and exhibits the range of geo-political contexts and diversity of growth patterns. In so doing it reconfigures and complicates the picture, challenges conceptions of growth and decline, questions projections of secularization, and re-shapes the future Communion.’ Kirsteen Kim, Professor of Theology and World Christianity, Leeds Trinity University, UK ‘The Essays in this book invite readers to further discourse on "growth" and "decline" within the respective "Prov