Sociology of the Church of England

This chapter begins to interrogate the role of religion in society as well as in religious institutions such as the CofE. Religion is a subject of interest to many people around the globe, and how it is expressed among different faiths’ group has also been interesting (Anderson, 2012). A lot has been written in the field of religion, especially on the derived benefits of following a particular religion (Anderson, 1983; Brewer, 2007; Smith, 2008a; Wuthnow, 2014; Beckford, 2015; Krause, 2015; May, 2015; Armitage, 2017). However, there are benefits of being a member of any religious group, which are (1) improved health and wellbeing, (2) shared values, (3) shared experience and (4) understanding of the norms and culture of the institution in which the religion is experienced. In this study, the CofE is the environment in which religion is experienced by the Black clergy.