Church in Wales
The Church in Wales is an Anglican church in Wales, composed of six dioceses.
The Archbishop of Wales does not have a fixed archiepiscopal see, but serves concurrently as one of the six diocesan bishops. The position is currently held by Cherry Vann, Bishop of Monmouth, since July 2025. Archbishop Vann is the first woman to hold the post of Archbishop of Wales, and therefore the first to be an Anglican archbishop in the United Kingdom or Ireland.
Unlike the Church of England, the Church in Wales is not an established church. Disestablishment took place in 1920 under the Welsh Church Act 1914 but the Church still bears some of the characteristics of a 'State' church, especially in areas like marriage and burial grounds.
As a province of the Anglican Communion, the Church in Wales recognises the Archbishop of Canterbury as a focus of unity, but without any formal authority. A cleric of the Church in Wales can be appointed to posts in the Church of England, including the See of Canterbury; a former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, was from Wales and served as Archbishop of Wales before his appointment to Canterbury.
According to the World Christian Database, published in 2021, there are an estimated 1.1 million people who were baptised as Anglicans in the Church in Wales.
Official name
The Church in Wales adopted its name by accident. The Welsh Church Act 1914 referred throughout to "the Church in Wales", the phrase being used to indicate the part of the Church of England within Wales. At a convention held in Cardiff in October 1917, Mr Justice Sankey said that, while the name "the Church of Wales" appealed to him, he advised that there were good legal reasons why the name "the Church in Wales" should be adopted, at least at first, to follow the wording in the act. The matter was therefore left at that convention for the second Governing Body to decide at its first session.History
can be traced back to the Romano-British culture: two of the earliest British saints, Julius and Aaron, were reportedly martyred in the Roman legionary town of Caerleon, south-east Wales, in the 3rd century CE. An organised episcopal church has had continuous existence in Wales since that time. The Age of the Saints in the 6th and 7th centuries was marked by the establishment of monastic settlements throughout the country by religious leaders such as Saint David, Illtud, Padarn and Saint Teilo. This was the period when the Welsh people developed a shared national identity, arising from their language and religious beliefs.The Welsh refused to cooperate with Augustine of Canterbury's mission to the Anglo-Saxons in the 6th century CE. However, a combination of other Celtic dioceses reconciling with the Holy See meant that from the early Middle Ages, even before the conquest of Wales by Edward I, the Welsh dioceses were part of the Province of Canterbury and also in communion with the See of Rome until the English Reformation. Afterward, they were part of the Church of England until disestablishment in 1920 as, during the reign of Henry VIII, Wales was incorporated into the legal realm of the Kingdom of England by the Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542.
Disestablishment
During the 19th century, Nonconformist churches increased in Wales, and eventually, the majority of Welsh Christians were Nonconformists, although the Church of England remained the largest single denomination. By the mid-19th century, failing to appoint a Welsh-speaking bishop to any Welsh diocese for 150 years caused real resentment; disestablishment was seen as a way to assert national and linguistic identity.Under the influence of Nonconformist politicians such as David Lloyd George, the Welsh Church Act 1914 was passed by the Liberal Government to separate Anglicanism in Wales from the Church of England. The bill was fiercely resisted by members of the Conservative Party and blocked in the House of Lords, but it was eventually passed under the provisions of the Parliament Act 1911.
The opposition to disestablishment was led by the Conservative politician F. E. Smith, who characterised the disestablishment bill as "a Bill which has shocked the conscience of every Christian community in Europe." In response to this description, the writer G. K. Chesterton penned the satirical poem "Antichrist, or the Reunion of Christendom: An Ode" containing the memorable retort "Chuck It, Smith".
The act both disestablished and disendowed the "Church in Wales", the term used to define the part of the Church of England which was to be separated. Disestablishment meant the end of the church's special legal status, and Welsh bishops were no longer entitled to sit in the House of Lords as Lords Spiritual. As the Church in Wales became independent of the state, tithes were no longer available to the church, leaving it without a major source of income.
Disendowment, which was even more controversial than disestablishment, meant that the endowments of the Church in Wales were partially confiscated and redistributed to the University of Wales and local authorities. This process was carried out by the Welsh Church Commissioners following the principles set out in the Welsh Church Act 1914. Endowments before 1662 were to be confiscated; those of later date would remain. This was justified by the theory that the pre-1662 endowments had been granted to the national church of the entire population, and hence belonged to the people as a whole rather than to the Church in Wales; this reasoning was hotly contested. The date 1662 was that of the Act of Uniformity following the Restoration; it was after this point that Nonconformist congregations began to develop and the Church of England ceased to be a comprehensive national church. Although secularisation of the cathedrals had previously been suggested,
the Church in Wales retained all the ancient church buildings and the privilege of conducting legal marriages without reference to the civil registrar.
The Welsh Church Act 1914 was the second Act of Parliament to receive Royal Assent without approval by the House of Lords under the Parliament Act 1911 - the first was the Government of Ireland Act 1914. Due to the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the Suspensory Act 1914 was passed at the same time, meaning that the act would not be implemented for the duration of the war. Disestablishment finally came into effect in 1920.
The Church in Wales adopted a written constitution, which has been revised from time to time, and elected a Governing Body which initially met once a year,
but now meets twice annually. The Governing Body has ultimate authority "to approve liturgies, review organizational structures, and secure firm fiscal resources for the mission and ministry of the church". The Church in Wales was one of the first members of the Anglican Communion to adopt synodical government.
Since 1920
; so the line of disestablishment is not the same as the border between the two countries. A few districts in the former counties of Monmouthshire, Radnorshire and Flintshire remain attached to parishes in the Dioceses of Hereford and Chester and consequently they are part of the Church of England. A complete English rural deanery with the generalised name March containing Oswestry and areas to the north-west of Shrewsbury, was transferred from its historic setting in the Diocese of St Asaph to be consistent with the civil border there. The churches of St Mary, Caernarfon, and Llangadwaladr, Anglesey, were transferred from the Diocese of Chester to that of Bangor.Today, the Church in Wales is fully independent of both the state and the Church of England. It is an independent member of the Anglican Communion, as are the Church of Ireland and the Scottish Episcopal Church.
In the first years of the 21st century, the Church in Wales has begun to engage in numerous debates. These particularly concern the appointment of women to the episcopate and the provincial recognition of the equal statuses of the Welsh and English languages in all aspects of church life.
Membership
Following disestablishment in 1920, the Church in Wales initially fared better than the Nonconformist churches, which suffered a decline during the late 20th century. In 1960, the Church claimed to have 182,854 communicants, an increase on the comparable figure of 155,911 for 1945, although a reduction on the figure of 196,389 Easter communicants in 1938. The Anglican Church does not have "a single definition of 'membership' in the Church in Wales." In 2006, the average weekly attendance was recorded at 6,780 aged under 18 and 39,490 aged over 18. The highest attendance was at Easter, with 68,120 at worship. In 2014, the attendance in the Church in Wales was 52,021 at Easter: a decline of about 16,000 members since 2007, but an increase from 2013. Also, in 2014, nineteen churches were closed or made redundant. Overall, in 2014, the Church in Wales reported 152,000 attenders in its parishes and congregations, compared to 105,000 in 2013. In 2018, the number of communicants during Easter was 46,163 and the number of persons on the Electoral Roll was 42,441.From 2015 statistics, when all "other major acts of worship" are included, the church reported having 206,000 total attenders. "Such additional services, which include civic services, family services, Remembrance, Carol and Christingle services, registered a total attendance of some 206,000 in 2015, compared with 152,000 in 2014." In 2017, "parishes recorded 210,000 people attending other types of traditional worship, which might include civic services, family services, Remembrance, Carol and Christingle services." In 2020, the church counted 146 church schools and 27,000 students.
In 2021, the World Christian Database, produced by the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and The World Christian Encyclopedia published by Edinburgh University Press, estimated there were 1.1 million baptised Anglicans in Wales, making it the largest Christian denomination in the country. In 2000, some membership figures taken as a percentage of the population was 1.6%. Between 1996 and 2016 the number of signed-up Church in Wales members dropped from 91,247 to 45,759 or 1.5% out of a total population of 3,113,150 The number of Church in Wales members on the "Electoral Roll" dropped further to 42,441 by 2018 or 1.4% out of the total Welsh population of 3,187,203 The Anglican church claims to be the largest denomination in Wales.