The Future Shapes of Anglicanism: Currents, Contours, Charts

To many people, the Church of England and worldwide Anglican Communion has the aura of an institution that is dislocated and adrift. Buffeted by tempestuous and stormy debates on sexuality, gender, authority and power - to say nothing of priorities in mission and ministry, and the leadership and management of the church - a once confident Anglicanism appears to be anxious and vulnerable. The Future Shape of Anglicanism offers a constructive and critical engagement with the currents and contours that have brought the church to this point. It assesses and evaluates the forces now shaping the church and challenges them culturally, critically, and theologically.

The Future Shape of Anglicanism engages with the church of the present that is simultaneously dissenting and loyal, as well as critical and constructive. For all who are engaged in ecclesiological investigations, and for those who study the Church of England and the wider Anglican Communion, this book offers new maps and charts for the present and future. It is an essential companion and guide to some of the movements and forces that are currently shaping the church.

Martyn Percy is Dean of Christ Church, Oxford. He is a member of the Faculty of Theology at the University of Oxford, where he also teaches in the Department of Sociology, and for the Said Business School. He also serves as a Professor of Theological Education at King’s College London and a Professorial Research Fellow at Heythrop College, University of London. He was formerly (from 2004-2014) the Principal of Ripon College, Cuddesdon, at Oxford. He writes on Christianity and contemporary culture, modern ecclesiology and practical theology. Recent books include Thirty-Nine New Articles: An Anglican Landscape of Faith (2013), Anglicanism: Confidence, Commitment and Communion (2013) and The Oxford Handbook of Anglican Studies (2015, and edited with Mark Chapman and Sathi Clarke). He was recently described in the journal Theology as the British theologian who is closest to being a ’missionary anthropologist’.