A book of this global nature and scope depends more than most on the good-will of others, and so there are many debts. Firstly I wish to thank my colleagues in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Leeds for their support and encouragement, in particular the successive heads of department: Professor Haddon Willmer, Professor Kim Knott, Dr Hugh Pyper and Dr Al McFadyen. I owe a particular debt of gratitude to Bishop Stephen Charleston, the President of the Episcopal Divinity School, and to the faculty there, for the award of a Proctor Fellowship. This enabled me to spend an exciting semester in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 2002, with access to the magnificent libraries of Harvard. Professors Ian Douglas, Christopher Daraysingh and Frederika Thompsett stimulated my thinking about the nature of Anglicanism as a world communion.

I wish to thank the library and academic staff of a number of institutions, most especially the Selly Oak Campus of the University of Birmingham, the Centre for the Study of Christianity in the Non-Western World at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies, the Henry Martyn Library at Westminster College, Cambridge and the library of the Uganda Christian University, Mukono, Uganda.

Kevin Taylor and Kate Brett at Cambridge University Press have been very patient and supportive. Special thanks to Dr Alistair Mason for his careful reading of the typescript, his perceptive advice on how to improve it, and his keen eye for detail.