Anglicanism

A Canadian View of What it is to be Anglican

A View of Anglican Spirituality - by the Rev. Clair McPherson, PhD

An Overview of Anglican History (with links on structure and governance)

The Official Web Site of the Anglican Communion

A Virtual Tour - The Anglican Communion spans 164 countries. This is a set of links to the member churches.

Anglicans On Line - The best source for news and resources related to the Anglican Communion.

The Anglican Communion News Service - Official news office

It may be important to note that only those churches that are recognized by the Archbishop of Canterbury are part of the Anglican Communion. There are a number of small break-away churches that continue to claim to be Anglican but are not recognized. In general the break-away churches that split from Anglicanism have seen the Communion as -- too liberal in doctrine and practice; too open to an expanded role in church & society for women, minorities, and gay people; etc. An internet search will produce more sites from break-away groups, or groups considering a break-away, than sites really associated with the Anglican Communion.

The Archbishop of Canterbury

Archbishop Rowan Williams, the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury

Jane and Rowan Williams The Archbishop Canterbury Cathedral

Photos: Anglican World/J Rosenthal

About the Archbishop

"He never thinks in cliches," said Bishop Barry Morgan of Llandaff, a colleague in Wales. "He looks at the issues of the day and then comes at them from a different angle, with clarity and integrity. He always has something pertinent to say, which is measured, well thought out and original. What he says is accessible and stems from his deep spirituality and a deep reflection on gospel values."

Archbishop Williams was born June 14, 1950 the only child of a Welsh-speaking family in Swansea, Wales. He attended Christ College at Cambridge University, receiving his degree in theology. He did research in Russian Christianity, speaks seven languages and lectures in five. He was ordained deacon in 1977 and priest in 1978.
He served nine years at Cambridge as tutor, dean and chaplain, he moved to Oxford where, at the age of 36, he was the youngest professor. He was chosen bishop of Monmouth in 1992 and archbishop and primate
of the Church in Wales in 2000. He and his wife Jane Paul, who lectures in theology at a college in Bristol, have
two children--Rhiannon, who is 14, and Pip, who is six (as of 2002). He admits that he enjoys watching "The Simpsons" and describes the program as "one of the most subtle pieces of propaganda around in the cause of sense, humility and virtue."

The Archbishop spoke was within a few hundred yards of the World Trade Center in New York when the terrorist attacks took place on September 11, 2002. He reflected on our response and our death. "Anger always blurs the real human features of those we're angry with. Frustration requires that we don't allow ourselves to imagine what it's like to be the other... The two fears, the two angers, don't connect. ........ The Church is supposed to be a community of people you'd be glad to die with…and if that is true about the Church, then faith becomes the one wholly inflexible ground for resistance to violence, precisely because it teaches us how to face death - not in excited expectation of reward, but in the sober letting-go of our fantasies in the sure hope that a faithful God hold us firmly in life and death alike. Only if we are learning in this way how to die and to love, can anything we say have any way in weight in a violent world." --an address to the Church in Wales' Governing Body

Archbishop of Canterbury

List of the Archbishops of Canterbury - from 597 to the present