Archbishop Welby has just completed 149,000 miles travelling with his wife Caroline to visit all 38 provinces of the Anglican Communion. He told The Times (6 Dec 2014): ‘Will there be an Anglican Communion [in 30 years time]? Very, very likely indeed. But it will look very different’.
He was surprised to find that being part of the Anglican Communion enabled Christians to have contact with government and local leaders, even when they were very small minorities with relatively few adherents.
This, he believed, was because in almost all cases the churches themselves were deeply engaged in reconciliation. ‘They’re building bridges in all kinds of directions. They are almost all heavily involved in their local communities and looking outwards.’ The visible manifestation was the large number of highly regarded schools and health clinics run by Anglicans. Though some schools catered for rich elites, most were open to all people, of all faiths, and catered particularly for the poor.
