The Anglican Communion is said to be coming apart at the seams. But is that really true? Backpacking through the Anglican Communion is the exciting book that challenges the tired narrative of Anglican disunity.
Jesse Zink has traveled tens of thousands of miles around the world, visiting and worshiping with Anglicans in some of the Communion’s most diverse provinces—Nigeria, the largest province ministering in an unstable political environment; South Sudan, at one point the fastest-growing church in the world, now rebuilding after devastating civil wars; England, the mother church of Anglicans, struggling to adjust to a new, secular age; South Africa, a church dealing with the legacy of entrenched discrimination and rapid social change. The story Zink learns at the grassroots level of the church is far different from the one that dominates its highest levels. He shows that when conversations about power, history, and sexuality are undertaken in a spirit of mutuality and trust, they can strengthen, not weaken, the Anglican Communion.
The result is a book that presents vivid slices of Anglican life around the world, argues convincingly that unity is central to the Communion’s mission, and presents a credible path to achieving that unity in a global church. It is a book that will be sure to shape coming debates about the future of the Anglican Communion.
Backpacking through the Anglican Communion: A Search for Unity was published in January 2014 by Morehouse Publishing (ISBN: 978-0819229014). It is available from your local bookstore, on IndieBound, on Amazon (Amazon.ca, Amazon.co.uk), or wherever you purchase books.
Questions? Comments? Contact the author directly.
Jesse Zink 
Fr Zink, congratulations on an excellent book! The title alone caught my attention and I ordered two copies immediately: one for me and one to give away. Now that I have read the book I will be ordering another five copies to give away as gifts to fellow Anglican Christians. The Anglican Communion is a precious gift from God our Heavenly Father not only to its own members but to the wider Christian Church and to the world that is outside the Body of Christ. Thank you for this superb book. I pray that it will be widely read, for in in God’s merciful providence, it will do much good. By the way, I write this as a one who was privileged to be a delegate to GAFCON 2013 in Nairobi, Kenya. Thus I differ strongly with your theological stance on homosexuality but I discern in your words one who truly loves the Lord Jesus Christ and that branch of His holy catholic Church which is called Anglican. May the one true God who is Father, Son and Hoy Spirit bless and prosper your priestly ministry
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I Have read your book with great pleasure which was enhanced by the fact that I had worshiped in many of the churches which you visited.
I had only one problem with your factual description and that concerned the Anglican Church in the Southern Sudan. You refer to it as becoming truly indigenous only during the first civil war. This would seem to be a denial of the facts. The early CMS missionaries established village churches across Equatoria province in the 1920’s and 30’s All of these were led by unpaid lay teachers. By the time that I joined the mission in Yei at the beginning of the 1950’s there were 70 such thriving churches in Yei parish served by one Sudanese priest. No CMS missionary was involved in the ministry to them apart from an episcopal visit once every two years to confirm the thousands of candidate all of whom had been prepared by unpaid lay readers. The same situation prevailed in Moru and Zande country. It is because the church had been under indigenous leadership at the parish level for so long that the departure of the missionaries had so little impact. You comment on the difficulty of finding a seat in Yei church on a Sunday morning. You would have had a similar difficulty in the 1950’s at the monthly communion service. The difference would have been that Yei then had a population of less than a thousand as compared to the tens of thousands at the time of your visit.
You also refer to the sense of failure among the missionaries when they were forced out. It was a small mission of forty people so we all knew each other well and I cannot think of a single one of my fellows who felt a sense of failure. At the end of ten years of living in a village and doing agricultural work I certainly had no sense of failure and that was justified when nine years later I was asked by the government in the south to return and head up the ministry of agriculture to which CMS agreed, and was able to see the fruits of my earlier work. When one has seen 50 lay readers who had served faithfully for ten or more years being ordained into the ministry (including the one from the village in which I lived) just before our expulsion it was hardly a reason for feeling either the sense of failure nor fear for the future of the church to which you refer. Perhaps you might probe a bit more deeply with the retired missionaries whom you met and who appear to have given you this impression.
This difference of opinion has in no way detracted from my enjoyment and appreciation of your book
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