|Anglican and Episcopal History| The Anglican Communion There
are 75 million members of the Anglican household, made up of
over 500 dioceses, 30,000 parishes and 64,000 individual
congregations. Anglican groups worship in every country on earth
except the Vatican City, Bhutan and a handful of small Islamic
states in Africa and the Indian Ocean. In fact, in several
countries, Anglicans are the only worshipping Christian
congregation. The majority of Anglicans are found in three main
areas: England and Wales (historically our beginning), sub-
Saharan Africa (missionaries of the 19th century built vibrant
churches, then led by native Africans), and Australia-New
Zealand (where the majority of the population is descended from
Anglican immigrants). Besides English, Anglicans worship in
Spanish, French, Japanese, Chinese, Portuguese, Arabic, Swahili,
Hindi-Urdu and other languages. Meetings of the autonomous local
churches occur regularly, most notably at the once-a-decade
“Lambeth Conference” of all the world’s bis