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Introduction

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The Church of England in the First Decade of the 21st Century

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Abstract

This book reports on two surveys of the Church of England from 2001 and 2013. The aim is to compare beliefs, attitudes and opinions among clergy and lay people to see if and how they changed between the two surveys. This chapter first looks briefly at some of the major events and changes that shaped the social context of Britain in this period. It then looks in more detail at what was happening in the Church of England, mainly by extracting key themes and issues from the annual ‘review of the year’ published in the Church Times in the period immediately before and following the two surveys. Some of the issues relate to items covered in more detail in later chapters, but others are important developments that were part of Church life and therefore part of the context in which the surveys were set.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In this book, I use ‘Church’ (with a capital letter) as shorthand for the Church of England.

  2. 2.

    Also referred to here as ‘Synod’ with a capital letter to distinguish it from diocesan or deanery synods.

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  1. York St John University, York, UK

    Andrew Village

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Village, A. (2018). Introduction. In: The Church of England in the First Decade of the 21st Century. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04528-9_1

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