The Presbyterian Church of England was a late-19th century and 20th century Presbyterian denomination in England. The church's origins lay in the 1876 merger of the English congregations of the chiefly Scottish United Presbyterian Church with various other Presbyterian congregations in England. [1] In 1972, the Presbyterian Church of England merged with the Congregational Church in England and Wales to become the United Reformed Church. [2]
A parish is a territorial entity in many Christian denominations, constituting a division within a diocese. A parish is under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of a priest, often termed a parish priest, who might be assisted by one or more curates, and who operates from a parish church. Historically, a parish often covered the same geographical area as a manor. Its association with the parish church remains paramount.
Presbyterianism is a Reformed (Calvinist) Protestant tradition named for its form of church government by representative assemblies of elders. Though other Reformed churches are structurally similar, the word Presbyterian is applied to churches that trace their roots to the Church of Scotland or to English Dissenter groups that formed during the English Civil War.
A deacon is a member of the diaconate, an office in Christian churches that is generally associated with service of some kind, but which varies among theological and denominational traditions.
The Church of Scotland is a Presbyterian denomination of Christianity that holds the status of the national church in Scotland. It is one of the country's largest, having 259,200 members in 2023. While membership in the church has declined significantly in recent decades, the government Scottish Household Survey found that 20% of the Scottish population, or over one million people, identified the Church of Scotland as their religious identity in 2019.
The United Reformed Church (URC) is a Protestant Christian church in the United Kingdom. As of 2024 it had approximately 44,000 members in around 1,250 congregations with 334 stipendiary ministers.
Congregationalism is a Reformed (Calvinist) tradition of Protestant Christianity in which churches practice congregational government. Each congregation independently and autonomously runs its own affairs. These principles are enshrined in the Cambridge Platform (1648) and the Savoy Declaration (1658), Congregationalist confessions of faith. The Congregationalist Churches are a continuity of the theological tradition upheld by the Puritans. Their genesis was through the work of Congregationalist divines Robert Browne, Henry Barrowe, and John Greenwood.
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.
Kirk is a Scottish and former Northern English word meaning 'church'. The term the Kirk is often used informally to refer specifically to the Church of Scotland, the Scottish national church that developed from the 16th-century Reformation. Many place names and personal names are derived from kirk.
In Anglican Christianity, the term low church refers to those who give little emphasis to ritual, often having an emphasis on preaching, individual salvation and personal conversion. The term is most often used in a liturgical sense, denoting a Protestant emphasis, whereas "high church" denotes an emphasis on ritual, often Anglo-Catholic.
A united church, also called a uniting church, is a denomination formed from the merger or other form of church union of two or more different Protestant Christian denominations, a number of which come from separate and distinct denominational orientations or traditions. Multi-denominationalism, or a multi-denominational church or organization, is a congregation or organization that is affiliated with two or more Christian denominations, whether they be part of the same tradition or from separate and distinct traditions.
The Presbyterian Church of Wales, also known as the Calvinistic Methodist Church, is a denomination of Protestant Christianity based in Wales.
Religion in the United Kingdom is mainly expressed in Christianity, which dominated the land since the 7th century. Results of the 2021 Census for England and Wales showed that Christianity is the largest religion, followed by the non-religious, Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, Judaism, Buddhism, and Taoism. Among Christians, Anglicanism is the most common denomination, followed by Catholicism, Presbyterianism, Methodism, Unitarianism, and Baptism. Results for the 2022 census in Scotland showed that 38.8% of the Scottish population identified as Christian, with 20.4% stating that the Church of Scotland is their main religion, whilst 13.3% stated their main religion was the Catholic church in Scotland.
The reformed confessions of faith are the confessional documents of various Reformed churches. These express the doctrinal views of the churches adopting the confession. Confessions play a crucial part in the theological identity of reformed churches, either as standards to which ministers must subscribe, or more generally as accurate descriptions of their faith. Most confessions date to the 16th and 17th century.
Ecclesiastical polity is the government of a church.
The Conservative Congregational Christian Conference is a Congregationalist denomination in the United States. It is the most conservative and oldest Congregationalist denomination in America following the dissolution of the Congregational Christian Churches. It is a member of the World Evangelical Congregational Fellowship and the National Association of Evangelicals.
Protestantism is the largest religious demographic in the United Kingdom.
Presbyterianism in England is practised by followers of the Reformed tradition within Protestantism who practise the Presbyterian form of church government. Dating in England as a movement from 1588, it is distinct from Continental and Scottish forms of Presbyterianism. The Unitarian historian Alexander Gordon (1841–1931) stated that, whereas in Scotland, church government is based on a meeting of delegates, in England the individual congregation is the primary body of government. This was the practice in Gordon's day, however, most of the sixteenth and seventeenth century English theoreticians of Presbyterianism, such as Thomas Cartwright, John Paget, the Westminster Assembly of Divines and the London Provincial Assembly, envisaged a Presbyterian system composed of congregations, classes and synods. Historically Presbyterians in England were subsumed into the United Reformed Church in 1972. In more recent years the Evangelical Presbyterian Church in England and Wales and the International Presbyterian Church have seen modest growth in England.
The Korean Presbyterian Church Abroad, formerly known as the Korean Presbyterian Church in America, is an independent Presbyterian denomination in the United States. It was founded in 1976 as a union of 3 Korean language Presbyteries. The mother church was the Presbyterian Church in Korea (TongHap). The church has a close relationship with the PC(USA) and the Korean Christian Church in Japan. In 2004 it had 29,000 members and 263 congregations. According to the recent statistics it has 55,000 members and 302 congregations. Official languages are English and Korean. The church uses the Westminster Confession and the Apostles Creed. Since 2010 it formed an English speaking presbytery. KPCA is a member of the World Communion of Reformed Churches. It is also a member of the interdenominational associations National Council of Churches and Christian Churches Together.
The Reformed Presbyterian Global Alliance is a communion of Presbyterians originating in Scotland in 1690 when its members refused to conform to the establishment of the Church of Scotland. The Reformed Presbyterian churches collectively have approximately 9,500 members worldwide in Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, Scotland, France, the United States of America, Canada, Japan, South Sudan, and Australia.