Anglicans grow by a million people each year

Anglicans grow by a million people each year

By John Sandeman

July 27, 2025

The number of Anglican Christians is growing by more than a million people every year, according to the respected scholar David Goodhew, visiting fellow of St John’s College, Durham University.

“…new data show[s] that the Communion has radically changed, and this raises questions about the process. The online World Christian Database gives the best data on the current size of the Communion. Numbers last recorded in 2020 show that global Anglicanism has doubled in the past 50 years,” Goodhew reported in The Church Times. Anglican churches are those derived from the Church of England (C of E) through inherited doctrine and practises.

“As it continues to increase by about one million a year, there are about 100 million Anglicans, as of 2025. This is the result of massive growth in the global South, while Anglicanism in the global North has mostly shrunk. Talk of Anglicanism’s demise is the opposite of the truth.”

Goodhew states the figure of 100 million is actually an undercount. He cites sub saharan Africa as the engine of growth. “The biggest Anglican Church in the Communion is no longer the C of E, but the Church of Nigeria. Add in Ugandan and Kenyan Anglicans, and those three Provinces [national churches] constitute nearly half the global Communion.” Goodhew does not use the exaggerated Sts from England in his calculations.

These three national churches are members of Gafcon, the Global Anglican Futures movement, that supports an Anglicanism centred on the Bible’s teaching. Together with other Anglican provinces (national churches) such as Myanmar and South Sudan, and conservative breakaway bodies such as the Anglican Church in North America and Australia’s Diocese of the Southern Cross, Gafcon contains a super majority of the world’s Anglicans.

Goodhew gives striking examples of where Anglicanism has grown. It is shifting from its history of growth in the British Empire.

“Before 1972, Congolese Anglicans had no dioceses: the 100,000 members were overseen by Ugandan bishops. Now, the Province of Congo has 14 dioceses and more than half a million members. Congo is one of the poorest and most war-torn countries in the world. As in Sudan, acute suffering has been the social soil in which Anglican churches have mushroomed.

Smaller but still striking growth has been seen in Chile. In 1970, there were about 4000 Anglicans in Chile. Now there are 23,000 in a newly formed and rapidly expanding Province. Once a Church mostly of British expats, Chilean Anglicanism is now predominantly Spanish-speaking.

“The diocese of Singapore is significant, but for a different kind of growth. Its membership rose seven-fold between 1970 and 2020, from 10,000 to 72,900. The number of Singaporean Anglicans has risen greatly. But much of the growth has come from energetic church-planting across a swath of Asia: in Nepal, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.”

“Data from the researcher Jeff Walton shows that these six countries — most of which were little influenced by the British Empire — together now have 167 Anglican churches and more than 16,000 Anglicans. The Anglican Church in Nepal alone — founded only 25 years ago — had 11,316 members in 2023. It is on course to become a diocese in the near future.”

The term “Anglicanism” is increasingly anachronistic.

John Sandeman is a prominent Christian writer and journalist known for his work with Eternity News and THE OTHER CHEEK. He has been a pivotal figure in shaping Australia's religious media landscape for over 15 years.