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Reports on a study of the state of the (Anglican) Church in Wales, which investigated the Church in Wales as a sociological institution through attitudes held by the clergy and lay members of the Church. Asserts that churches are institutional associational groups with rational‐bureaucratic forms of administration, rather than organizations, but that it helps to conceptualize the church as if it were an organization. Outlines some of the problems the Church faces – maintaining a presence in sparsely populated areas, secularization, decreasing personnel, and conservatism. Discusses the Church's theory of itself and explores the conceptual world of the laity with regard to the nature of the Church, its structure, and the relationship between the Church and the world. Concludes that social enquiry is all about listening.

In 1920 that part of the Church of England located in Wales was disestablished and became an autonomous and self‐governing Province of the Anglican communion. It owes its name "The Church in Wales" to two main considerations: it could not be called the Church of Wales because the argument for disestablishment was that the Welsh people were predominantly nonconformist; it could not be called the Church of England in Wales since its members were not expatriate English but Welsh, its bishops having been responsible for the translation of the Bible into Welsh and its services in rural areas being conducted in Welsh (Davies, 1970; Walker, 1976; Price, 1990; Davies, 1991).