13 - Welsh Anglicans and Cultural Debate

Summary

The history of the Church in Wales since disestablishment in 1920 may be understood as a story of battles won and wars lost. The church lost the battle over disestablishment to Nonconformity. However, in the long run, the victory of the dissenters cost the largest Nonconformist churches dearly. At the same time, for many Anglicans the loss of disestablishment was offset by a renewed theological self-confidence enjoyed by the Church in Wales. This was particularly marked by a Tractarian identity. As elsewhere in the Christian world, for the Church in Wales also ‘invented tradition’, typical in modern societies at certain points of crisis and change. Anglicans and Nonconformists continued well into the late twentieth century to construct and deploy sophisticated and slanted versions of ‘historic’ Welsh Christian identity. This chapter examines aspects of this process. It also asks whether the energy devoted to these ongoing battles had the effect of limiting the depth at which Welsh Christians of all backgrounds were able to imagine the challenges of contemporary Wales.