Episcopal polity

An episcopal polity is a hierarchical form of church governance in which the chief local authorities are called bishops.

Their leadership is both sacramental and constitutional; as well as performing ordinations, confirmations, and consecrations, the bishop supervises the clergy within a local jurisdiction and is the representative both to secular structures and within the hierarchy of the church.

Bishops are considered to derive their authority from an unbroken, personal apostolic succession from the Twelve Apostles of Jesus.

These gatherings, subject to presidency by higher ranking bishops, usually make important decisions, though the synod or council may also be purely advisory.

Since all trace their ordinations to an Anglican priest, John Wesley, it is generally considered that their bishops do not share in apostolic succession.

The Apostle Paul in the Epistle to the Philippians, Clement of Rome and the Didache when talking about the ecclesial system of governance, mention “bishops and deacons”, without the word “presbyter”, which has been argued by some to show that there was no presbyter-bishop distinction yet in the first century.

[6] Ignatius of Antioch, writing in already the early second century, makes a clear distinction of bishops and presbyters, meaning that his letters show that an episcopal system was already in existence by his time.

[3] Jerome stated that churches were originally governed by a group of presbyters, only later electing bishops to suppress schisms.

However, the Patriarch of Constantinople (now Istanbul) is seen as the primus inter pares, the "first among equals" of the autocephalous churches of Eastern Orthodoxy.

[14][15] Anglicanism is a Reformation tradition that lays claim to the historic episcopate through apostolic succession in terms comparable to the various Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and certain Lutheran Communions.

Anglicans assert unbroken episcopal succession in and through the Church of England back to St. Augustine of Canterbury and to the first century Roman province of Britannia.

While some Celtic Christian practices were changed at the Synod of Whitby, the church in the British Isles was under papal authority from earliest times.

[16] The legislation of Henry VIII effectively establishing the independence of the Church of England from Rome did not alter its constitutional or pastoral structures.

The influence of Richard Hooker was crucial to an evolution in this understanding in which bishops came to be seen in their more traditional role as ones who delegate to the presbyterate inherited powers, act as pastors to presbyters, and holding a particular teaching office with respect to the wider church.

Anglican opinion has differed as to the way in which episcopal government is de jure divino (by the Divine Right of Kings).

On the one hand, the seventeenth century divine, John Cosin, held that episcopal authority is jure divino, but that it stemmed from "apostolic practice and the customs of the Church ... [not] absolute precept that either Christ or His Apostles gave about it" (a view maintained also by Hooker).

Regardless, both parties viewed the episcopacy as bearing the apostolic function of oversight which both includes, and derives from, the power of ordination, and is normative for the governance of the church.

This formulation, in turn, laid the groundwork for an independent view of the church as a "sacred society" distinct from civil society, which was so crucial for the development of local churches as non-established entities outside England, and gave direct rise to the Catholic Revival and disestablishmentarianism within England.

Those limits are expressed in Article XXI of the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, ratified in 1571 (significantly, just as the Council of Trent was drawing to a close), which held that "General Councils ... may err, and sometimes have erred ... wherefore things ordained by them as necessary to salvation have neither strength nor authority, unless it may be declared that they be taken out of holy Scripture."

Nevertheless, the powers of the Methodist episcopacy can be relatively strong and wide-reaching compared to traditional conceptions of episcopal polity.

[19] In the United Methodist Church, bishops are elected for life, can serve up to two terms in a specific conference (three if special permission is given), are responsible for ordaining and appointing clergy to pastor churches, perform many administrative duties, preside at the annual sessions of the regional Conferences and at the quadrennial meeting of the worldwide General Conference, have authority for teaching and leading the church on matters of social and doctrinal import, and serve to represent the denomination in ecumenical gatherings.

In the United States, Lutheran churches tend to adopt a form of government that grants congregations more independence, but ultimately has an episcopal structure.

Although it never uses the term, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (informally known as the LDS Church) is episcopal, rather than presbyterian or congregational, in the sense that it has a strict hierarchy of leadership from the local bishop/branch president up to a single prophet/president, believed to be personally authorized and guided by Jesus Christ.

[citation needed] Local congregations (branches, wards, and stakes) have de jure boundaries by which members are allocated, and membership records are centralized.

[citation needed] This system developed gradually from a more presbyterian polity (Joseph Smith's original title in 1830 was "First Elder") for pragmatic and doctrinal reasons, reaching a full episcopacy during the Nauvoo period (1839–1846).