The House of Laity is the lower house in the tricameral General Synod of the Church of England legislature. They are responsible for representing the laity of the Church of England in the legislature. They are indirectly elected every 5 years by members on the Church of England's electoral roll via the representatives on the Diocesan Synods.
The concept of giving the laity a voice in the governance of the Church of England dated back to the English Reformation when King Henry VIII of England broke the Church of England away from the Roman Catholic Church. The doctrine of lay supremacy was one of the rationales for the breakaway. Initially the Members of Parliament in the House of Commons were used as the lay representatives as all Church of England legislature had to go through Parliament. [1] However during the 20th century, Parliament focussed little time on Church of England matters. [2] When the Church Assembly (predecessor to the General Synod) was established, it was decided that normal churchgoers would replace the House of Commons as the representatives of the laity; thus creating the House of Laity. [1]
The House of Laity, along with the House of Bishops and House of Clergy, hold a veto over Church of England Measures and reports. An example of this was in 2012 when the House of Laity failed to reach the two-thirds majority needed to approve the ordination of women bishops despite the other Houses of the Synod approving it. [3]
Members of the House of Laity are elected every five years. Despite their name, they are not directly elected by the Church of England's members. To be eligible for election a person has to be on the electoral roll of a Church of England parish church and be elected by their church's members or co-opted onto the parochial church council, then selected to represent the parish at the deanery synod. [1] From there, they have to be selected to represent the deanery at the diocesan synod, from whose numbers the diocese's representative to the General Synod is elected. [4] There has been criticism of this method of election with suggestions that it leaves the system open to influence from special interest groups. [1] There is no maximum age limit to sit in the House of Laity however some members have voluntarily chosen not to stand for re-election when they reach 70 on the grounds that Church of England clergy are obliged to retire at that age. [5]
All dioceses of the Province of Canterbury and the Province of York are represented with two representatives in the House of Laity. The Diocese of Sodor and Man is not represented in the House of Laity. However, the duties of the House of Laity insofar as measures extend to the Isle of Man are taken on by Tynwald from the diocesan synod. [6]
The Church of England is the established Christian church in England and the Crown Dependencies. It is the origin of the Anglican tradition, with foundational doctrines being contained in the Thirty-nine Articles and The Books of Homilies. Its adherents are called Anglicans.
A synod is a council of a Christian denomination, usually convened to decide an issue of doctrine, administration or application. The word synod comes from the Ancient Greek σύνοδος 'assembly, meeting'; the term is analogous with the Latin word concilium'council'. Originally, synods were meetings of bishops, and the word is still used in that sense in Catholicism, Oriental Orthodoxy and Eastern Orthodoxy. In modern usage, the word often refers to the governing body of a particular church, whether its members are meeting or not. It is also sometimes used to refer to a church that is governed by a synod.
The Church of Ireland is a Christian church in Ireland, and an autonomous province of the Anglican Communion. It is organised on an all-Ireland basis and is the second-largest Christian church on the island after the Roman Catholic Church. Like other Anglican churches, it has retained elements of pre-Reformation practice, notably its episcopal polity, while rejecting the primacy of the pope.
An ecclesiastical court, also called court Christian or court spiritual, is any of certain non-adversarial courts conducted by church-approved officials having jurisdiction mainly in spiritual or religious matters. Historically, they interpret or apply canon law, a basis of which was the Corpus Juris Civilis of Justinian, which is also considered the source of the civil law legal tradition.
The Scottish Episcopal Church is a Christian denomination in Scotland. Scotland's third largest church, the Scottish Episcopal Church has 303 local congregations. It is also an ecclesiastical province of the Anglican Communion.
The Church in Wales is an Anglican church in Wales, composed of six dioceses.
The Lords Spiritual are the bishops of the Church of England who sit in the House of Lords of the United Kingdom. Up to 26 of the 42 diocesan bishops and archbishops of the Church of England serve as Lords Spiritual. The Church of Scotland, which is Presbyterian, and the Anglican churches in Wales and in Northern Ireland, which are no longer established churches, are not represented. The Lords Spiritual are distinct from the Lords Temporal, their secular counterparts who also sit in the House of Lords.
A convocation is a group of people formally assembled for a special purpose, mostly ecclesiastical or academic. The Britanica dictionary defines it as "a large formal meeting of people ".
A parochial church council (PCC) is the executive committee of a Church of England parish and consists of clergy and churchwardens of the parish, together with representatives of the laity. It has its origins in the vestry committee, which looked after both religious and secular matters in a parish. It is a corporate charitable body.
The General Synod is the tricameral deliberative and legislative organ of the Church of England. The synod was instituted in 1970, replacing the Church Assembly, and is the culmination of a process of rediscovering self-government for the Church of England that had started in the 1850s.
The appointment of Church of England diocesan bishops follows a detailed process, reflecting the church's traditional tendency towards compromise and complex solutions, traditional ambiguity between hierarchy and democracy, and traditional role as a semi-autonomous state church.
In the Anglican Communion, the model of government is the 'Bishop in Synod', meaning that a diocese is governed by a bishop acting with the advice and consent of representatives of the clergy and laity of the diocese. In much of the Communion the body by which this representation is achieved is called the diocesan synod.
In Anglicanism, a licensed lay minister (LLM) or lay reader is a person authorised by a bishop to lead certain services of worship, to preach and to carry out pastoral and teaching functions. They are formally trained and admitted to the office, but they remain part of the laity, not of the clergy.
In the Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion as well as some Lutheran denominations, a rural dean is a member of clergy who presides over a "rural deanery" ; "ruridecanal" is the corresponding adjective.
The Anglican ministry is both the leadership and agency of Christian service in the Anglican Communion. Ministry commonly refers to the office of ordained clergy: the threefold order of bishops, priests and deacons. More accurately, Anglican ministry includes many laypeople who devote themselves to the ministry of the church, either individually or in lower/assisting offices such as lector, acolyte, sub-deacon, Eucharistic minister, cantor, musicians, parish secretary or assistant, warden, vestry member, etc. Ultimately, all baptized members of the church are considered to partake in the ministry of the Body of Christ.
The Convocations of Canterbury and York are the synodical assemblies of the bishops and clergy of each of the two provinces which comprise the Church of England. Their origins go back to the ecclesiastical reorganisation carried out under Archbishop Theodore of Canterbury (668–690) and the establishment of a separate northern province in 733. Until 1225 the synods were composed entirely of bishops, but during the thirteenth century more and more clergy were cited until by 1283 the membership was established as the bishops, deans, archdeacons and abbots of each province together with one proctor (representative) from each cathedral chapter and two proctors elected by the clergy of each diocese. The main purpose of the convocations was to take counsel for the well-being of the church and to approve canonical legislation, but in practice much time was spent in discussing the amount of tax to be paid to the Crown since the clergy were a separate estate of the realm and refused to be taxed in or through Parliament. Before the end of the nineteenth century, the Convocation of Canterbury, which was numerically very much larger, played the major role and the activity of the Convocation of York was often little more than giving formal approval to the decisions taken by the southern province.
The General Synod of Hong Kong Sheng Kung Hui exercises the metropolitical authority of the Anglican Province of Hong Kong Sheng Kung Hui. It is a tricameral synod which governs the Province and has the final authority in all matters affecting life, order and canonical discipline of the Church. Its chairperson is the Archbishop of Hong Kong.
The House of Clergy is the middle house in the tricameral Church of England General Synod legislature. It consists of representatives of the ordained clergy of the Church of England.
In the Church of England and other Anglican churches, a deanery synod is a synod convened by the Rural Dean and/or the Joint Lay Chair of the Deanery Synod, who is elected by the elected lay members. The Synodical Government Measure 1969 makes it a statutory body.
The House of Bishops is the upper house of the tricameral Church of England General Synod legislature. It consists of all 42 Diocesan Bishops of the Church of England's Provinces of Canterbury and York as well as nine elected suffragan bishops. This is not to be confused with the Lords Spiritual, the most senior bishops in the Church of England sitting in the House of Lords ex officio.