FIVE representatives of the wider Anglican Communion will help to choose the next Archbishop of Canterbury. But new data show that the Communion has radically changed, and this raises questions about the process. The online World Christian Database gives the best data on the current size of the Communion. Numbers last recorded in 2020 show that global Anglicanism has doubled in the past 50 years.
As it continues to increase by about one million a year, there are about 100 million Anglicans, as of 2025. This is the result of massive growth in the global South, while Anglicanism in the global North has mostly shrunk. Talk of Anglicanism’s demise is the opposite of the truth.
The engine room of the Communion is sub-Saharan Africa. This now accounts for two-thirds of Anglicans worldwide, and there is significant growth to be found in Asia, Latin America, and parts of Oceania. These are estimates of the number of people affiliated to Anglican churches, not estimates of church attendance.
For Europe, the figures are inflated by the many English people who are baptised in the C of E, but who do not subsequently attend church, although English baptism figures are, in any case, now falling away fast.
Overall, talk of 100 million Anglicans is really an undercount. These figures do not include Anglicans from South Asia, since the Churches there which are in communion with Canterbury are United Churches formed with other denominations. English Anglicans are wont to take little interest in the wider Communion, but if they paid it more attention, they might well feel encouraged.
The biggest Anglican Church in the Communion is no longer the C of E, but the Church of Nigeria. Add in Ugandan and Kenyan Anglicans, and those three Provinces constitute nearly half the global Communion.
NOT everywhere in the global South is growing. South African Anglicanism, in particular, has grown far less than either the South African population or most other African Provinces. Similarly, Anglicanism in Japan, Korea, and the West Indies has been in marked decline or flatlined in recent years.
Substantial Anglican communities have, however, sprung up in areas that had a minimal Anglican presence until recent decades. They are, mostly, outside what was the British Empire, and were not areas to which, historically, British people migrated.
Before 1972, Congolese Anglicans had no dioceses: the 100,000 members were overseen by Ugandan bishops. Now, the Province of Congo has 14 dioceses and more than half a million members. Congo is one of the poorest and most war-torn countries in the world. As in Sudan, acute suffering has been the social soil in which Anglican churches have mushroomed.
Smaller but still striking growth has been seen in Chile. In 1970, there were about 4000 Anglicans in Chile. Now there are 23,000 in a newly formed and rapidly expanding Province. Once a Church mostly of British expats, Chilean Anglicanism is now predominantly Spanish-speaking.
The diocese of Singapore is significant, but for a different kind of growth. Its membership rose seven-fold between 1970 and 2020, from 10,000 to 72,900. The number of Singaporean Anglicans has risen greatly. But much of the growth has come from energetic church-planting across a swath of Asia: in Nepal, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.
Data from the researcher Jeff Walton shows that these six countries — most of which were little influenced by the British Empire — together now have 167 Anglican churches and more than 16,000 Anglicans. The Anglican Church in Nepal alone — founded only 25 years ago — had 11,316 members in 2023. It is on course to become a diocese in the near future.
All this has happened in the past 30 years, in a hugely strategic part of the world. Anglicanism’s nature is rapidly shifting.
Behind the Singaporean dynamism is a coherent strategy. For example, in Thailand, “hub” cities are picked out — possessing features such as an airport, a university, a growing population, and openings for congregations to serve their surrounding population, such as by offering English-language instruction. Once such centres are established, further expansion is planned into smaller communities.
Anglicanism is expanding in many other areas where growth might seem unlikely — such as Arab nations and North Africa. The days when Anglicanism was tied mainly to English-speaking lands and/or areas that had been part of the British Empire are long gone.
IN THE West, there has been substantial decline in Anglican numbers for decades — and it accelerated during Covid: Anglican congregations in the West shrank by about one fifth during the pandemic. There has been a small “bounce-back” in some Provinces, but nowhere near enough to make up for the decline.
In some Western Provinces, such as Canada, there has been an even more profound decline. New data for Canada show that the massive drop that it experienced before and during Covid has continued since. Its average Sunday attendance fell by nearly two-thirds between 2001 and 2023, from about 162,000 to about 59,000. There are some vibrant Anglican congregations in Canada, but the overall trend suggests that the Anglican Church of Canada will be reduced to a small rump within a generation.
Neil Turner/Lambeth PalaceBishops, their spouses, and others prepare for their group photo at the 2022 Lambeth Conference
Other Western Churches have a less steep trajectory of decline, but the Anglican West’s trajectory has, especially since 2000, been downwards overall.
A few Western dioceses have shown greater resilience. Most notable is London, which managed to grow, modestly, over the period from about 1990 to about 2015. Although it has dropped back in the past decade, it remains significantly more robust overall than other Western Anglican dioceses since 1990.
In the same way, Sydney has been, relatively speaking, more resilient than other Australian dioceses. To a degree, something similar could be said of Toronto — in the sense that its decline has been less steep than that of the rest of Canada.
It used to be thought that great cities were centres of secularity: now, partly owing to their hyper-diversity and burgeoning populations, “gateway cities” such as those already mentioned are markedly more receptive to faith than many rural areas.
Looking at global Anglicanism, what is striking is how the dramatic shrinkage of Western Anglicanism has, so far, little disturbed the workings of the Communion. Western Anglicans are becoming numerically marginal, and yet remain hugely influential within Anglican structures.
In a break from tradition, five members of the wider Communion will sit on the Crown Nominations Commission (News, 16 May). This looks like a greater say for the Anglican Communion, but looks can deceive.
The way in which the five Communion votes are allocated mutes the voice of the global South and amplifies that of a shrinking Western Anglicanism. The process gives one vote to each of the Americas, Asia, Europe, Oceania, and Africa. That means that Africa, which accounts for two-thirds of Anglicans worldwide, gets one fifth of the Communion representation.
The Americas, Europe, and Oceania are far smaller fractions of the Communion, but are counted as equal to Africa. Moreover, while they contain areas of growth, they are dominated by Churches in sharp decline.
In Anglicanism, everyone is equal, but some are more equal than others. The way in which the process is structured has the effect of giving a megaphone to those whose primary experience is of decline.
The Communion representatives are from Provinces that have seen marked decline, such as Wales and Aotearoa/New Zealand, or from Provinces not in the forefront of Anglicanism’s recent expansion. This makes them distinctly unrepresentative of the Communion as a whole — which is growing fast.
It would be bracing if it were decided that the Communion representatives should come only from Provinces with a track record of growth. But this is not going to happen.
Western Anglicanism is, mostly, more comfortable with decline than growth. It tends to accept an ecclesiology of palliative care, in which shrinking Churches are seen as inevitable. Thus, the format for selecting Communion voices has screened out the most dynamic Provinces from helping to select the next Archbishop of Canterbury.
Anglicanism is growing fast, worldwide. Anglicans should take heart from that, but the Provinces with the most significant growth will not have a voice in the selection of the next Archbishop.
The distribution of Anglicans in the past 50 years
The Revd Dr David Goodhew is Vicar of St Barnabas’s, Middlesbrough, and a Fellow of St John’s College, Durham University.
