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A bishop is an ordained member of the clergy who is entrusted with a position of authority and oversight in a religious institution. In Christianity, bishops are normally responsible for the governance and administration of dioceses. The role or office of the bishop is called episcopacy. Organizationally, several Christian denominations utilize ecclesiastical structures that call for the position of bishops, while other denominations have dispensed with this office, seeing it as a symbol of power. Bishops have also exercised political authority within their dioceses.
The Church of England is the established Christian church in England and the Crown Dependencies. It is the origin of the Anglican tradition, which combines features of both Reformed and Catholic Christian practices. Its adherents are called Anglicans.
An episcopal polity is a hierarchical form of church governance in which the chief local authorities are called bishops. The word "bishop" here is derived via the British Latin and Vulgar Latin term *ebiscopus/*biscopus, from the Ancient Greek ἐπίσκοπος epískopos meaning "overseer". It is the structure used by many of the major Christian Churches and denominations, such as the Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Church of the East, Anabaptist, Lutheran, and Anglican churches or denominations, and other churches founded independently from these lineages. Many Methodist denominations have a form of episcopal polity known as connexionalism.
The terms Old Catholic Church, Old Catholics, Old-Catholic churches, or Old Catholic movement, designate "any of the groups of Western Christians who believe themselves to maintain in complete loyalty the doctrine and traditions of the undivided church but who separated from the see of Rome after the First Vatican council of 1869–70". The expression Old Catholic has been used from the 1850s by communions separated from the Roman Catholic Church over certain doctrines, primarily concerned with papal authority and infallibility. Some of these groups, especially in the Netherlands, had already existed long before the term. The Old Catholic Church is separate and distinct from Traditionalist Catholicism.
The Church of Sweden is an Evangelical Lutheran national church in Sweden. A former state church, headquartered in Uppsala, with around 5.4 million members at year end 2023, it is the largest Christian denomination in Sweden, the largest Lutheran denomination in Europe and the third-largest in the world, after the Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania.
Full communion is a communion or relationship of full agreement among different Christian denominations or Christian individuals that share certain essential principles of Christian theology. Views vary among denominations on exactly what constitutes full communion, but typically when two or more denominations are in full communion it enables services and celebrations, such as the Eucharist, to be shared among congregants or clergy of any of them with the full approval of each.
Ecumenism – also called interdenominationalism, or ecumenicalism – is the concept and principle that Christians who belong to different Christian denominations should work together to develop closer relationships among their churches and promote Christian unity. The adjective ecumenical is thus applied to any non-denominational initiative that encourages greater cooperation and union among Christian denominations and churches.
The Polish National Catholic Church is an independent Old Catholic church based in the United States and founded by Polish-Americans.
The Anglican Church of Canada is the province of the Anglican Communion in Canada. The official French-language name is l'Église anglicane du Canada. In 2022, the Anglican Church counted 294,931 members on parish rolls in 1,978 congregations, organized into 1,498 parishes. The 2021 Canadian census counted 1,134,315 self-identified Anglicans, making the Anglican Church the third-largest Canadian church after the Catholic Church and the United Church of Canada.
The Anglican Catholic Church of Canada (ACCC) is a Continuing Anglican church that was founded in 1979 by traditional Anglicans who had separated from the Anglican Church of Canada. The ACCC has fifteen parishes and missions; with two bishops and 22 clergy.
The Union of Utrecht of the Old Catholic Churches, most commonly referred to by the short form Union of Utrecht (UU), is a federation of Old Catholic Churches, nationally organized from schisms which rejected Roman Catholic doctrines of the First Vatican Council in 1870; its member churches are not in communion with the Roman Catholic Church.
The Catholic Church has engaged in the modern ecumenical movement especially since the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) and the issuing of the decree Unitatis redintegratio and the declaration Dignitatis humanae. It was at the Council that the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity was created. Those outside of the Catholic Church were categorised as heretics or schismatics, but in many contexts today, to avoid offence, the euphemism "separated brethren" is used.
The Old Catholic Church in Italy was a Union of Utrecht of the Old Catholic Churches (UU) mission in Italy until 2011. Some former missions are in full communion with the Anglican Communion.
The Bishop of Ebbsfleet is a suffragan bishop who fulfils the role of a provincial episcopal visitor in the Church of England. From its creation in 1994 to 2022, the Bishop of Ebbsfleet served traditionalist Anglo-Catholic parishes that reject the ordination of women as priests and bishops. Since 2023, the bishop has served conservative evangelical parishes that reject the ordination and/or leadership of women due to complementarian beliefs.
Anglican interest in ecumenical dialogue can be traced back to the time of the Reformation and dialogues with both Orthodox and Lutheran churches in the sixteenth century. In the nineteenth century, with the rise of the Oxford Movement, there arose greater concern for reunion of the churches of "Catholic confession". This desire to work towards full communion with other denominations led to the development of the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral, approved by the Third Lambeth Conference of 1888. The four points were stipulated as the basis for church unity, "a basis on which approach may be by God's blessing made towards Home Reunion":
The Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) is a Christian denomination in the Anglican tradition in the United States and Canada. It also includes ten congregations in Mexico, two mission churches in Guatemala, and a missionary diocese in Cuba. Headquartered in Ambridge, Pennsylvania, the church reported 977 congregations and 124,999 members in 2022. The first archbishop of the ACNA was Robert Duncan, who was succeeded by Foley Beach in 2014.
The Nordic Catholic Church, formerly known as the Lutheran Free Synod of Norway, is an Old Catholic church body based in Norway, of high church Lutheran patrimony. The Nordic Catholic Church is a member of the Union of Scranton.
The Episcopal Church (TEC), based in the United States with additional dioceses elsewhere, is a member church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. It is a mainline Protestant denomination and is divided into nine provinces. The presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church is Michael Bruce Curry, the first African American bishop to serve in that position.
The Ecumenical Catholic Communion (ECC) is an Independent Catholic church based within the United States. Its members understand themselves as following the Catholic tradition without being in communion with the Bishop of Rome. The ECC is a confederation of independent communities based in the United States and Europe. The membership of the ECC is about 10,000, including seven bishops, and more than 50 communities across 20 states. In 2009, the Ecumenical Anglican Church (EAC), an independent church, joined the ECC. The ECC is a member of the National Council of Churches (NCC).
The Union of Scranton is a communion of Old Catholic churches established in 2008 by the Polish National Catholic Church (PNCC) of the United States, after the Union of Utrecht began ordaining women and blessing same-sex unions.
References
- ↑ "Agreement - The old catholic churches united in the Union of Utrecht" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2019-05-23.
- ↑ "Churches in Communion with the Church of England". Archived from the original on 2010-03-25. Retrieved 2010-04-25., Diocese in Europe, Churches in Communion with the Church of England , Churches of the Porvoo Agreement, Retrieved February 8, 2011.
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