From the Editor Churches, Communities and Society Peter Manley Scott 1 peter.scott@manchester.ac.uk ABSTRACT Four articles based on presentations from the Lincoln Theological Institute’s 2013 Conference on ‘Churches, Communities and Society’ deal with issues facing the Church of England and other faith communities in the UK, and reflect the legacy of the Institute and the previous Lincoln Theological College. KEYWORDS: Anglicanism, ‘Churches, Communities and Society’, Lincoln Theological Institute The four following articles in this number of the Journal of Anglican Studies originate from the 2013 anniversary conference, ‘Churches, Communities and Society’, held to celebrate ten years of the Lincoln Theological Institute at the University of Manchester, UK. The conference began from the premise that in contemporary British society, Christian religion refuses to stay in its place. Unruly, it is established in some places (England, Scotland) and yet in all places numerically in decline; public, and yet caught off guard by an Occupy movement; suborned, and yet capable of protest; lordly, and yet attempting to represent the common good; proactively interfaith, and yet caught up in its own internal concerns; and national, yet present in very different ways in city and country. It has been noted that the older Christian denominations are decreasing in size, and with this comes a certain defensiveness. Admittedly, this decline is sometimes obscured by immigration from 1. Peter Scott is Samuel Ferguson Professor of Applied Theology and Director of the Lincoln Theological Institute, University of Manchester, UK. Journal of Anglican Studies Vol. 13(2) 153–155 [doi:10.1017/S1740355315000145] © The Journal of Anglican Studies Trust 2015 First published online 10 July 2015 https://doi.org/10.1017/S1740355315000145 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 54.161.69.107, on 11 Jun 2020 at 10:38:33, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms.