Aparish is a territorial entity in manyChristian denominations, constituting a division within adiocese. A parish is under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of apriest, often termed aparish priest, who might be assisted by one or morecurates, and who operates from aparish church. Historically, a parish often covered the same geographical area as amanor. Its association with the parish church remains paramount.[1]
By extension the termparish refers not only to the territorial entity but to the people of its community or congregation as well as to church property within it. In England this church property was technically in ownership of the parish priestex officio, vested in him on his institution to that parish.
First attested in English in the late 13th century, the wordparish comes from theOld Frenchparoisse, in turn fromLatin:paroecia,[2] theRomanisation of theAncient Greek:παροικία,romanized: paroikia, "sojourning in a foreign land",[3] itself fromπάροικος (paroikos), "dwelling beside, stranger, sojourner",[4] which is a compound ofπαρά (pará), "beside, by, near"[5] andοἶκος (oîkos), "house".[6]
The eighth Archbishop of CanterburyTheodore of Tarsus (c. 602–690) appended the parish structure to theAnglo-Saxon township unit, where it existed, and whereminsters catered to the surrounding district.[7]
Parish boundary markers for St Peter's and St Owen's inHereford
Broadly speaking, the parish is the standard unit inepiscopal polity of church administration, although parts of a parish may be subdivided as achapelry, with achapel of ease orfilial church serving as the local place of worship in cases of difficulty to access the main parish church.
In the wider picture of ecclesiastical polity, aparish comprises a division of adiocese or see. Parishes within a diocese may be grouped into adeanery orvicariate forane (or simplyvicariate), overseen by adean orvicar forane, or in some cases by anarchpriest. Some churches of theAnglican Communion have deaneries as units of anarchdeaconry.
An outstation is a newly created congregation, a term usually used where the church isevangelical, or amission and particularly in African countries,[8][9] but also historically in Australia.[10] They exist mostly within theCatholic andAnglican parishes.[8][9][11][12][13][14]
The Anglican Diocese of Cameroon describes their outstations as the result ofoutreach work "initiated, sponsored and supervised by the mother parishes". Once there is a big enough group of worshippers in the same place, the outstation is named by the bishop of the diocese. They are run by "catechists/evangelists" or lay readers, and supervised by the creator parish orarchdeaconry.[8]
Outstations are not self-supporting, and in poor areas often consist of a very simple structure. The parish priest visits as often as possible. If and when the community has grown enough, the outstation may become a parish and have a parish priest assigned to it.[9]
In the Catholic Church, each parish normally has its ownparish priest (in some countries calledpastor orprovost), who has responsibility and canonical authority over the parish.[15]
What in most English-speaking countries is termed the "parish priest" is referred to as the "pastor" in theUnited States, where the term "parish priest" is used of any priest assigned to a parish even in a subordinate capacity. These are called "assistant priests",[16] "parochial vicars",[17] "curates", or, in the United States, "associate pastors" and "assistant pastors".
Each diocese (administrative region) is divided into parishes, each with their own central church called theparish church, where religious services take place. Some larger parishes or parishes that have been combined under one parish priest may have two or more such churches, or the parish may be responsible forchapels (orchapels of ease) located at some distance from themother church for the convenience of distant parishioners.[18] In addition to a parish church, each parish may maintain auxiliary organizations and their facilities such as arectory,parish hall,parochial school, orconvent, frequently located on the same campus or adjacent to the church.
Normally, a parish comprises all Catholics living within its geographically defined area, but non-territorial parishes can also be established within a defined area on a personal basis for Catholics belonging to a particularrite, language, nationality, or community.[19] An example is that of personal parishes established in accordance with the 7 July 2007motu proprioSummorum Pontificum for those attached to the pre-Vatican II liturgy.[20]
In theLutheran Churches, parishes (Swedish:socken orförsamling) are territorial, meaning that they include the people living within its boundaries.[21]
At the end of the 19th century, theChurch of Sweden possessed 2,000 parishes.[21]
TheChurch of England's geographical structure uses the local parish church as its basic unit. The parish system survived theReformation with the Anglican Church'ssecession from Rome remaining largely untouched; thus, it shares its roots with theCatholic Church's system described above. Parishes may extend into different counties or hundreds and historically many parishes comprised extra outlying portions in addition to its principal district, usually being described as 'detached' and intermixed with the lands of other parishes. Church of England parishes nowadays all lie within one of42 dioceses divided between the provinces ofCanterbury, 30 andYork, 12.[22]
Each parish normally has its own parish priest (either avicar orrector, owing to the vagaries of the feudaltithe system: rectories usually having had greater income) and perhaps supported by one or morecurates ordeacons—although as a result of ecclesiasticalpluralism some parish priests might have held more than one parishliving, placing a curate in charge of those where they did not reside. Now, however, it is common for a number of neighbouring parishes to be placed under onebenefice in the charge of a priest who conducts services by rotation, with additional services being provided bylay readers or other non-ordained members of the church community.
In Englandcivil parishes and their governingparish councils evolved in the 19th century as ecclesiastical parishes began to be relieved of what became considered to be civic responsibilities. Thus their boundaries began to diverge. The word "parish" acquired a secular usage. Since 1895, a parish council elected by public vote or a (civil) parish meeting administers a civil parish and is formally recognised as the level of local government below adistrict council.
The traditional structure of the Church of England with the parish as the basic unit has been exported to other countries and churches throughout theAnglican Communion andCommonwealth but does not necessarily continue to be administered in the same way.
The Church in Wales wasdisestablished in 1920 and is made up of six dioceses. It retained the parish system and parishes were also civil administration areas untilcommunities were established in 1974, but did not necessarily share the same boundaries. The reduction in the numbers of worshippers, and the increasing costs of maintaining often ancient buildings, led over time to parish reorganisation, parish groupings and Rectorial Benefices (merged parishes led by a Rector).
In 2010, the Church in Wales engaged the Rt RevRichard Harries (Lord Harries of Pentregarth), a former Church of England Bishop of Oxford; ProfCharles Handy; and Prof Patricia Peattie, to carry out a review into the organisation of the Church and make recommendations as to its future shape. The group published its report ("Church in Wales Review") in July 2012 and proposed that parishes should be reorganised into larger Ministry Areas (Ardaloedd Gweinidogaeth). It stated that "the parish system, as originally set up ... is no longer sustainable" and suggested that the Ministry Areas should each have a leadership team containing lay people as well as clergy, following the principles of "collaborative ministry".[25] Over the next decade, the six dioceses all implemented the report, with the final Ministry Areas being instituted in 2022. In theDiocese of Saint Asaph (Llanelwy), they are known as Mission Areas (Ardaloedd Cenhadaeth).
The parish is also the basic level of church administration in theChurch of Scotland. Spiritual oversight of each parish church inScotland is responsibility of the congregation'sKirk Session. Patronage was regulated in 1711 (Patronage Act) and abolished in 1874, with the result thatministers must be elected by members of the congregation. Many parish churches in Scotland today are "linked" with neighbouring parish churches served by a single minister. Since theabolition of parishes as a unit of civil government in Scotland in 1929, Scottish parishes have purely ecclesiastical significance and the boundaries may be adjusted by the local Presbytery.
In theUnited Methodist Church congregations are called parishes, though they are more often simply called congregations and have no geographic boundaries. A prominent example of this usage comes inThe Book of Discipline of The United Methodist Church, in which the committee of every local congregation that handles staff support is referred to as the committee on Pastor-Parish Relations. This committee gives recommendations to the bishop on behalf of the parish/congregation since it is the United Methodist Bishop of theepiscopal area who appoints a pastor to each congregation. The same is true in theAfrican Methodist Episcopal Church and theChristian Methodist Episcopal Church.
In New Zealand, a local grouping of Methodist churches that share one or moreministers (which in the United Kingdom would be called acircuit) is referred to as a parish.
^Ball, Jeremy. (2010). "The 'Three Crosses' of Mission Work: Fifty Years of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) in Angola, 1880-1930".Journal of Religion in Africa.40 (3):331–357.doi:10.1163/157006610X532202.JSTOR25801381.
^Code of Canon Law, canon 519: "The parish priest is the proper clergyman in charge of the congregation of the parish entrusted to him. He exercises the pastoral care of the community entrusted to him under the authority of thediocesan bishop, whose ministry of Christ he is called to share, so that for this community he may carry out the offices of teaching, sanctifying and ruling with the cooperation of other priests or deacons and with the assistance of lay members of Christ's faithful, in accordance with the law".
Sidney Webb, Beatrice Potter.English Local Government from the Revolution to the Municipal Corporations. London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1906
James Barry Bird.The laws respecting parish matters: containing the several offices and duties of churchwardens, overseers of the poor, constables, watchmen, and other parish officers : the laws concerning rates and assessments, settlements and removals of the poor, and of the poor in general. PublisherW. Clarke, 1799
