Why the Parish?
It surprises many people entering Anglicanism from other Christian traditions that we use the term ‘parish’. They had always referred to their church as simply “church” or “congregation,” but now they hear the word “parish.” What is a parish? How is it different, and why?
Let’s lay out two understandings of what defines a parish. The first is a canonical designation, or how we treat the congregation under the standing church rules. The other, which is undoubtedly more interesting, is the theological concept of how the parish serves in the Kingdom and Church.
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The Parish as Canonical Entity
First, the boring stuff. The canons (rules governing the operation of our church and dioceses) stipulate that a parish is essentially a self-supporting congregation. It should pay a priest (the head priest of a parish is a rector, from the Latin for ruler, director, governor, and guide). It should also cover all the expenses necessary to care for the people in its charge.
The parish has a board of lay leaders called a vestry, which manages the financial affairs of the congregation on behalf of the whole membership. The diocese doesn’t send any support; in fact, the parish sends funds to the diocese to support the bishop, new church plants, and other ministries. The parish has the prerogative to call a priest with the bishop’s consent. That priest can stay in place as long as the parish maintains its canonical status and as long as two of the three parties (the bishop, the vestry, and the priest himself) agree that he should.
The Parish as Theological Entity
However, what I get excited about when discussing this idea of a parish is how it addresses a significant need for today—constituent units of the whole body of Christ living and acting as local representatives of the Church. For many local congregations, they have nothing above them save an idea of the Church as a universal body. Yet, they lack any sense of solidarity with anything greater, or a sense of themselves as subsidiaries of the whole. The idea of a parish is, in fact, a middle term between the whole Body of Christ and the individual Christian.
Indeed, it is even a middle entity between the Church and the world. This is supremely necessary if we are to have any greater idea in our heads than the Church as merely individual Christians claiming a minimal parity in faith. Further, it is necessary that in the Church’s activity in worshiping the Lord and making disciples, we seek to root men and women in the life of the whole Church as the living Body of Christ. In short, for us as Anglicans, congregationalism won’t do!
Parish: The Origin Story
The term “parish” originates from the Greek word paroikos, meaning “near the household.” The bishop in the ancient Church, rather than occupying an office, occupied a household (oikos) where members of the Church gathered in everyday life. This was how the ancient church trained the clergy. The community also provided for the poor and embraced the lonely.
In this, the bishop maintained his status as the Latin pater familias, the head of a household of approximately 50 people. As the need for more local Christian communities arose, the bishops placed clergy from the household in charge of these local congregations. Their proximity to the household maintained a bond with the bishop, and through the bishop, with the entire Church.
Saint Cyprian of Carthage remarks on this subject:
… the episcopate (the body of bishops) is one; it is the whole in which each enjoys full possession. The Church is likewise one, though she be spread abroad, and multiplies with the increase of her progeny: even as the sun has rays many and one light.
Cyprian, On the Unity of the Catholic Church, chap. 5. (PL 4:516–17)
Two Natures, One Church, One Christ
The Church mirrors the dual natures of Christ—both human and divine—in that she is a body both human and divine, a divine humanity in which the Holy Spirit dwells. Thus, the Church is both visible and invisible. The former comprises its human members, but at the same time, the latter is the body of Christ. She shows forth the Gospel in the world because she is not purely an “idea,” but a living body. This body increases not by individual conversion, but by the establishment of local churches in her communion, what we should readily call “parishes.”
For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit. For the body does not consist of one member but of many.
1 Corinthians 12:12-14
making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in Christ, things in heaven and things on earth in him.
Ephesians 1:9, 10
Planting in the Catholic Tradition
Martin Thornton, an excellent author and priest, once wrote:
… the parish is the Catholic Church in microcosm. This Church, moreover, is threefold. The holy concourse in paradise and in heaven does not split itself up into insular parties of patrons-per-parish. If the whole body is complete at every altar, the whole communion of saints are in attendance at every altar. As the Lady Julian saw all creation in a hazel-nut, so her hazel-nut comes to universal size. When parochialism is organic and when ye are the body of Christ, it is the antithesis of narrow because it is, in place the Catholic Church.
The Heart of the Parish, A Theology of Remnant
What the world needs are not more congregations of varied theological interests and convictions, with authority that is merely local. Instead, we need local parishes to work in solidarity with the entire Church. They should have their individual charisms and cultural contexts. However, they should also have constituent membership in something greater than themselves. This presents to the world not only a unified vision and witness, but to the Church’s members the stability of that consistent witness, especially in the midst of a mobile society.
Consequently, we at Anglican Compass have set out to inspire clergy and people to establish congregations that not only represent this church or that church, but of the whole Church, here and abroad, alive and at rest, African, Asian, and American, “no Jew or Greek, slaves or free (1 Cor. 12:13).” We also seek to provide an opportunity for clergy to think together about how to cultivate a unified mission. Thus, although we are Anglican in every sense of this word, this identity does not preclude catholicity—membership in the whole Church, professing the faith of the entire Church. We are committed to planting parishes that grow more parishes, planting not only our own churches but also the whole Church universal. Let us pray that, as our work continues, the Lord will see this through!
Photo by kodachrome25 from Getty Images Signature, courtesy of Canva.
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