Spinning off from the earlier posts on competence, I thought it would be worth putting up a couple of posts considering how the Anglican Church understands the roles of different people within it. No doubt, this will be far from exhaustive and there will be lots of alternative perspectives out there, but let's see how we go...
So, bishops.
The Anglican Church believes the Bible teaches that there are three layers of church leadership: bishops, priests and deacons (= episkopoi, presbyteroi, diakonoi in the original Greek of the New Testament). This is disputed by some who think that that episkopoi and presbyteroi are two words for people in the same roles.
Bishops then sit at the top of the hierarchy of ordained people and have oversight of the parish churches and clergy of a given region called a diocese, which itself has a central diocesan church - the cathedral. Large dioceses can have several bishops although the archbishop is the one who holds final authority while the others are his assistant (or, depending on the particular diocese, coadjutor or suffragan) bishops.
Bishops' functions are mostly ceremonial and administrative. Although some take on the 'pastor of pastors' role, many clergy now have mentors who are not part of the formal structure of the church. And because bishops don't have direct congregational oversight or hold a regular pulpit, I've heard it suggested (by someone who I think holds more to the idea of a two-fold order of leadership) that Anglican bishops should really be re-designated as deacons.
Getting beyond structures and definitions however, the most important parts of a bishop's role are the making, hiring and firing of clergy and the upholding of doctrinal standards. In the Anglican Church, a lay person cannot be made a deacon, nor a deacon a priest, apart from a bishop's ordination. Three bishops are required to consecrate a priest as a bishop. No clergyperson can have an active Anglican ministry in a diocese without being granted a licence by its bishop or archbishop. So, while the average punter may not ever receive much teaching or pastoral care from their diocesan bishop (they could actually probably go along happily for quite a long time without ever seeing them or even knowing their name!), nonetheless, their bishop has an enormously large impact on the local church through the clergy that they licence to serve there.
Biblically, we might say that Titus is an example of someone with this bishop's role of appointing leaders for a region and guarding doctrine. He was instructed by Paul to "appoint leaders in every town" (Titus 1:5) and to choose people who would, among other things, "be able to both preach with sound doctrine and to refute those who contradict it" (Titus 1:9). Unlike most Anglican bishops though, we see as we read through Paul's letter that Titus also seems to have had an active pastoral ministry of his own.
Thoughts on Theology-in-Practice for Anglicans and Episcopalians - plus some other stuff.
In this series somewhere, you might want to discuss the whole concept of "orders of ministry". It's not something I've really got my head around, but in practical terms it means being appointed a deacon/priest/bishop isn't just functional, it's an appointment for life regardless of your ministry role. The clearest example is if a bishop resigns from their role (e.g. assistant bishop of X diocese) and returns to parish ministry, they are still a bishop, even though they don't have the same authority over priests or responsibility to uphold faith and doctrine. Or if a priest takes an administrative role (e.g. director of Anglicare) with no parish responsibilities, they are still a priest. I'm not saying this is wrong, but some flavours of Anglicans will emphasise this ontological aspect over the functional aspect.
ReplyDeleteGood post, Tim. A minor note, that the Australian convention of naming the bishops of major metropolitan regions "Archbishop" is unusual in general in the Anglican communion. E.g. in England there are only two Archbishops: Canterbury and York and these don't necessarily oversee an army of assistant bishops. In most other parts of the communion the Archbishop = the Primate of the church for that country.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand there are plenty of diocesan bishops in, e.g., England who oversee assistant bishops without being called Archbishop.
Unimportant nomenclature I know but it can get very confusing for the novice (I was confused when I first joined the Anglican church) so it helps to know what is Anglican church-wide and what is idiosyncratic to Australia.
Thanks for both of these.
ReplyDeleteADR - You ask an excellent qn. I've made a note to put up some musings about it soon.
JG - Excellent corrective and England is a good example of the different use of the terms 'bishop' and 'archbishop'. While both Canterbury and York do currently have assistant bishops, I'm not sure that this has always been the case. Thanks for this point.
Just to add a nuance to Jenny's point - isn't an Archbishop or Presiding Bishop the head of a Province? In Australia, each state except for Tasmania is a Province, e.g. Province of Victoria, NSW, etc. and the Archbiship chairs the Provincial Council, although I'm not sure what that council does or how often it meets. In the CofE, York and Canterbury are provinces under which the other dioceses are grouped. In my part of the world, the Dioceses of Egypt & North Africa, Iran, Jerusalem, and Cyprus & the Gulf make up the Province of Jerusalem & the Middle East, of which Bishop Mouneer is the Presiding Bishop. Other countries have 1 province for the whole country and hence 1 archbishop - e.g. Tanzania. Although, there are exceptions to this too! In TEC, as I understand it, they have multi-state provinces, but only the head of TEC is a Presiding Bishop. So, lots of local variations!
ReplyDeleteThanks for this Andrew - I think this is a most helpful addition.
ReplyDeleteThere are, however, a couple more complications when we think about 'Metropolitan' bishops and 'Primates' or 'Presiding Bishops'.
In Aus, our archbishops are also metropolitan bishops of their provinces - eg. the archbishop of Melb is also metropolitan of Vic. But then, one of the archbishops also has the role of Primate (or Presiding Bishop) of the whole national church. So, currently, the archbishop of Brisbane is also the metropolitan of Queensland and the primate of Aus.
There is confusion around the term 'province' in all this. In the worldwide Anglican Communion, Australia as a whole is considered to be a province, but within Australia we talk about our state-based provinces (sub-provinces??).
And then, going the other way, we could talk about regions within dioceses - or archdeaconaries within regions, or deaneries within archdeaconaries, or clustered parishes within deaneries...
I think the lesson is that if you love org charts, you've come to the right denomination!