- This article is about active religious orders. For orders which have closed, see Former religious orders in the Anglican Communion.
Anglican religious orders are communities of men or women (or in some cases mixed communities of both sexes) in the
Anglican Communion who live under a common rule of life. The members of
religious orders take
vows which often include the traditional monastic vows of
poverty,
chastity and
obedience, or the ancient vow of stability, or sometimes a modern interpretation of some or all of these vows. Members may be
laity or
clergy, but most commonly include a mixture of both. They lead a common life of work and prayer, sometimes on a single site, sometimes spread over multiple locations.