Parish

A parish is a territorial unit that was usually historically served by a parish church or local church. This ecclesiastical administrative unit (see Civil Parish) is typically found in these Churches: Roman Catholic, Anglican Communion, the Eastern Orthodox Church, Lutheran churches, and some Methodist, and Presbyterian churches.

It refers to a local, ecclesiastical community or territory, including its main church building, perhaps one or more chapels of ease and other property. A parish might be further subdivided, to cope with difficult access, into chapelries but this is now obsolete. The word "parish" is also used more generally to refer to the collection of people who attend a particular church. In this usage, a parish minister is one who serves a congregation.


 * A parish is a subdivision of a diocese or see. The diocese is headed by a bishop
 * A diocese is a subdivision of a province. The province is led by a metropolitan bishop
 * A province may cover all or part of a country or a group of countries and is presided over by an archbishop who is Primate

In some countries a parish (then more precisely a civil parish) is (also) an administrative area of civil government. Parishes of this type are found in England, Ireland, the Isle of Man, the Channel Islands, the U.S. state of Louisiana, and a number of island nations in the region of the Caribbean. In general they originate from an ecclesiastical parish of the same name perhaps, in the course of time, with modified boundaries to better suit local government.

Roman Catholic Church
In the Roman Catholic Church, each parish has at least one parish priest, who has responsibility and canonical authority over the parish (the Latin for this post is parochus).

A parish priest may have one or more fellow priests assisting him. In Catholic usage this priest is technically a "parochial vicar", but is commonly called an "associate pastor" or "assistant pastor" (or just "associate" or "assistant"), a curate, or vicar - common as they are, these terms are inaccurate and many dioceses have recently begun using the canonical term "parochial vicar" even in general parish communications (bulletins and the like).

Each diocese (administrative region) is divided into parishes, each with their own central church called the parish church, where religious services take place. Some larger parishes or parishes that have been combined under one pastor may have two or more such churches, or the parish may be responsible for chapels (sometimes called "chapels of ease") located at some distance from the parish church for the convenience of distant parishioners.

In the Catholic Church there also exists a special type of ecclesiastical parish called a national parish, which is not territorial in nature. These are usually created to serve the needs of all of the members of a particular language group, particularly of an immigrant community, in a large area: its members are not defined by their precise location, but by their country of origin or native language.

Other variations are also possible. In some Catholic jurisdictions created for the armed forces, for instance, the entire diocese or archdiocese is treated as a single parish: all of the Catholics in the military of the United States and all of their Catholic dependents, for instance, form the Archdiocese of the Military Services, USA, a diocese defined not by territory but by another quality (in this case, relationship to the military) - this archdiocese has its own archbishop, and all records and other matters are handled in a central office rather than by individual priests assigned to military post chapels or chaplains of units in the field.
 * See also:Team of priests in solidum

England

 * See also: How the Church of England is organised and Church of England parish church

The parish system in England survived the Reformation largely untouched so shares its roots with the Roman Catholic system described above. Many Church of England parishes owe their first existence to the establishment of a minster church or to an estate church founded by Anglo-Saxon or Norman landowners. A present-day parish boundary may even correspond to that of an Anglo-Saxon estate of more than one thousand years ago but this is most likely to have happened in the 17th century when boundaries were rearranged to fit a parish with a landowner's responsibilities and so avoid further dispute. Some little-populated areas of England were outside any parish, i.e. extra-parochial, until the 19th century though tiny technical exceptions remain. The term unparished area, used for most urban areas, relates to Civil parishes and not ecclesiastical parishes.

In the Church of England, part of the Anglican Communion, the legal right to appoint or recommend a parish priest is called an advowson, and its possessor is known as a patron. The patron can be an individual (or individuals in rotation), the Crown, a bishop, a college, a charity, or a religious body. Appointment as a parish priest gives the incumbent the enjoyment of a benefice or living. Appointment of patrons is now governed by the Patronage (Benefices) Rules 1987. In mediaeval times and after, such a right of appointment of the priest could be used to influence local opinions but a patron's candidate had to be approved by the Bishop responsible for the parish. An example can be seen in the article on Grendon, Northamptonshire. It was frequently used to promote particular religious views. For example Robert Rich, 2nd Earl of Warwick presented many puritan clergy. In the 19th century Charles Simeon established a trust to purchase advowsons and install evangelical priests. Ownership of an advowson now carries little personal advantage.
 * Patronage (Benefices) Rules 1987
 * Process for appointing a parish priest

Historically each parish should have had at least one parish priest (who might be termed its vicar or its rector), perhaps supported by one or more curates or deacons - although as a result of ecclesiastical pluralism some priests might have held more than one parish living, placing a curate in charge of those where they did not reside. Now, however, it is common for a number of neighbouring parishes to be placed in the charge of a single vicar who takes services at them in rotation, with additional services being provided by lay readers or other non-ordained members of the congregation.

Ecclesiastical parish
The business affairs of the parish were administered by its vestry, an assembly or meeting of parishioners or their representatives to make the necessary decisions. After 1837 the vestry's civil as distinct from ecclesiastical responsibilities devolved in various steps to the civil parish and its parish council. The established church also began its own administrative reforms. The ecclesiastical parish's remaining business affairs are now administered by the vestry's replacement, its parochial church council, which is partly appointed and partly elected from the congregation.

The responsibilities of the ecclesiastical parish's vestry
In the absence of any other authority (which there would be in an incorporated city or town), the vestry, the ecclesiastical parish administration, was from time out of mind the recognised unit of local government, concerned for the spiritual but also the temporal or physical welfare of parishioners and their parish amenities, collecting local rates or taxes and taking responsibility for the care of the poor, the roads, law enforcement, etc. For example, parishes operated the Elizabethan poor law. See Parish constable, Church rate, Parish schools. What follows is a snapshot of the system at a particular point in time.

In 1835 more than 15,600 parishes looked after their own:
 * churches and burial grounds, parish cottages and workhouses, their common lands and endowed charities, their market crosses, pumps, pounds, whipping posts, stocks, cages, watch houses, weights and scales, clocks and fire engines.
 * Or to put it another way: the maintenance of the church and its services, the keeping of the peace, the repression of vagrancy, the relief of destitution, the mending of roads, the suppression of nuisances, the destruction of vermin, the furnishing of soldiers and sailors, even to some extent the enforcement of religious and moral discipline.  These were among the multitudinous duties imposed on the parish and its officers by the law of the land.
 * The parishes spent not far short of one-fifth of the budget of the national government itself.
 * Central government placed its obligations on parishes without specifying how they should be carried out. So no two parishes were organised in the same way, unless by coincidence.

The responsible householder found himself bound to serve in succession in the onerous and wholly unpaid public offices of
 * Churchwarden, Overseer, Surveyor of Highways, Constable.
 * Once a year every one was called upon in church to send his team or go in person to labour for six days on the roads.
 * The whole parish had to turn out, when summoned, to join in the hue and cry after suspected robbers. A sheriff's Posse
 * The property-less man escaped the parish taxes and received, when destitute, the parish pay, but under the law of settlement found himself, at the discretion of the Overseers of the Poor, legally confined to his parish for the term of his natural life if he was unable to show sufficient resources to avoid becoming a dependent in a new parish. He might live in a new parish but without "settlement" receive no benefits from the new parish, just from his parish of origin, see Settlement Act 1662)
 * The wealthy classes in town or country could buy exemption from, or commute for money, the innumerable personal obligations imposed by the parish, and thought of it therefore only as a taxing authority.

English parishes are currently each within one of 40 dioceses divided between the provinces of Canterbury, 28 and York, 12.

Civil parish
Today a parish council or meeting elected by the general public administers a civil parish and is a near equivalent to a district council.

Civil parishes and their governing parish councils evolved as ecclesiastical parishes began to be relieved of what became considered to be civil responsibilities. Their separate boundaries began to vary. Poor law administration did not need the subdivision of old parishes when new populations and congregations mushroomed. Again, it was better for poor law administration districts, Civil parishes, to fit county boundaries. Ecclesiastical parishes not always did. So the word parish acquired a secular usage.

Scotland
In the Church of Scotland, the parish is basic level of church administration. The spiritual oversight of each parish church is responsibility of the congregation's Kirk Session. Patronage was regulated this way in 1712 (Patronage Act) and abolished in 1874, ministers must be elected by members of the congregation. Many parish churches are now "linked" with neighbouring parish churches (served by a single minister.) With the abolition of parishes as a unit of civil government in Scotland, parishes now have a purely ecclesiastical significance in Scotland (and the boundaries may be adjusted by the local Presbytery).

Methodism
In the United States, in some United Methodist Churches the congregation is called a parish. The United Methodist Bishop of the Episcopal Area appoints a minister to each parish.

Other US Methodist churches such as the African Methodist Episcopal Church and Christian Methodist Episcopal Church have a Bishop residing over an Episcopal Area who appoints ministers to different parishes.

In New Zealand, a local grouping of Methodist churches that share one or more ministers (which in the United Kingdom would be called a circuit) is referred to as a parish.