Churchmanship of Anglicans

http://www.anglican-mainstream.net/2008/12/19/churchmanship-of-anglicans/#more-6080

[Anglican Mainstream] 19 Dec 2008--Ever since the NEAC 5 meeting at All Souls on November 15 there has been a flurry of articles in the Anglican Christian press about both that Conference and the different components of evangelical Anglican life. One or two of these comment that the overall relative strengths of conservatives, open evangelicals and others are not known. Well, they are in part, and this article looks at what is known.

The English Church Censuses since 1989 have asked each church leader to give an indication of the churchmanship of his congregation. Christian Research has had excellent response rates by Anglicans to these studies — 75 per cent in 1989 and 55 per cent in 2005 for example — much more than normally expected from such research. The question asks the minister to tick up to three boxes from a menu of nine items, with an open tenth “Other” option.

The nine options, stated without any description, are: Anglo- Catholic, Broad, Catholic, Charismatic, Evangelical, Liberal, Low Church, Orthodox and Radical. There are theoretically over 1,200 combinations that clergy might choose from these, but in practice just 147 were used in 2005 (see Page 5.13 in Religious Trends No 6, together with 1989 figures for comparison).