The Church of Scotland is the national church in Scotland, and still one of the country's largest, with 270,000 members in 2022. According to the government Scottish Household Survey in 2019, 20% of the Scottish population identified the Church of Scotland as their religious identity. The Church of Scotland's governing system is presbyterian in its approach, therefore, no one individual or group within the church has more or less influence over church matters. There is no one person who acts as the head of faith, as the church believes that role is the "Lord God's". As a proper noun, the Kirk is an informal name for the Church of Scotland used in the media and by the church itself.
A curate is a person who is invested with the care or cure of souls of a parish. In this sense, curate means a parish priest; but in English-speaking countries the term curate is commonly used to describe clergy who are assistants to the parish priest. The duties or office of a curate are called a curacy.
The United Reformed Church (URC) is a Protestant Christian church in the United Kingdom. As of 2022 it had approximately 37,000 members in 1,284 congregations with 334 stipendiary ministers.
The Scottish Episcopal Church is the ecclesiastical province of the Anglican Communion in Scotland.
The Diocese of Worcester forms part of the Church of England (Anglican) Province of Canterbury in England.
A stipend is a regular fixed sum of money paid for services or to defray expenses, such as for scholarship, internship, or apprenticeship. It is often distinct from an income or a salary because it does not necessarily represent payment for work performed; instead it represents a payment that enables somebody to be exempt partly or wholly from waged or salaried employment in order to undertake a role that is normally unpaid or voluntary, or which cannot be measured in terms of a task. A paid judge in an English or Welsh magistrates' court was formerly termed a "stipendiary magistrate", as distinct from the unpaid "lay magistrates". In 2000, these were respectively renamed "district judge" and "magistrate".
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.
Ripon College Cuddesdon (RCC) is a Church of England theological college in Cuddesdon, a village 5.5 miles (8.9 km) outside Oxford, England. The College trains men and women for ministry in the Church of England: stipendiary, non-stipendiary, local ordained and lay ministry, through a wide range of flexible full-time and part-time programmes.
A faith school is a school in the United Kingdom that teaches a general curriculum but which has a particular religious character or formal links with a religious or faith-based organisation. The term is most commonly applied to state-funded faith schools, although many independent schools also have religious characteristics.
Dame Sarah Elisabeth Mullally is a British Anglican prelate and former nurse. Bishop of London since 2018, she is the first woman to hold this office and sits on the Lord Spiritual benches in the House of Lords. From 1999 to 2004, she was Chief Nursing Officer for England and the National Health Service's director of patient experience for England; from 2015 to 2018, she served as Bishop of Crediton, a suffragan bishop in the diocese of Exeter.
Ecclesiastical polity is the government of a church. There are local (congregational) forms of organization as well as denominational. A church's polity may describe its ministerial offices or an authority structure between churches. Polity relates closely to ecclesiology, the theological study of the church.
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.
Rev. Nicolas David Stacey was a priest of the Church of England and social activist. He was Rector of Woolwich in the 1960s, and Director of Social Services for Kent County Council from 1974 to 1985.
Paul Roger Butler is a retired British Anglican bishop and a former Lord Spiritual of the House of Lords. He was installed and enthroned in Durham Cathedral on 22 February 2014 and was the Bishop of Durham, the diocesan bishop of the Diocese of Durham, from 20 January 2014 to 29 February 2024. On 12 September 2013 it was announced that he had been appointed as bishop-designate of Durham He was previously bishop of Southwell and Nottingham. He was installed at Southwell Minster on 27 February 2010. He served as the suffragan bishop of Southampton in the Diocese of Winchester from 2004 until 2010.
Vicar is a title given to certain parish priests in the Church of England and other Anglican churches. It has played a significant role in Anglican church organisation in ways that are different from other Christian denominations. The title is very old and arises from the medieval arrangement where priests were appointed either by a secular lord, by a bishop or by a religious foundation. Historically, but no longer, vicars share a benefice with a rector to whom the great tithes were paid. Vicar derives from the Latin vicarius meaning a substitute.
Christine Ann Froude is a British retired Anglican priest. She was Archdeacon of Malmesbury from 2011 and Acting Archdeacon of Bristol, 2013–2018.
Joanna Susan Penberthy is a retired Welsh Anglican bishop. From 2016 until 2023 she served as the Bishop of St Davids in the Church in Wales. She was the first woman to become a bishop in the Church in Wales, when she was consecrated a bishop on 21 January 2017.
Emma Gwynneth Ineson is a British Anglican bishop and academic, specialising in practical theology. Since 2023, she has served as Bishop of Kensington, the area bishop for West London. From 2014 to 2019, she was Principal of Trinity College, Bristol, an evangelical Anglican theological college; from 2019 to 2021, she was Bishop of Penrith, the suffragan bishop of the Diocese of Carlisle; and from 2021 to 2023, she served as "Bishop to the Archbishops of Canterbury and York", i.e. assistant bishop on the staffs of both archbishops.
Anne Catherine Dyer is a British Anglican bishop, previously a rector and an academic administrator.
Julie Anne Conalty is a British Anglican bishop. Since 19 July 2021, she has been the Bishop of Birkenhead, one of two suffragan bishops of the Church of England Diocese of Chester. She previously served as Archdeacon of Tonbridge in the Diocese of Rochester since 2017.
