Draft proposal for revised category structure for Religious Occupations in England

Question

I am aware that there is currently an embargo on creating new Religious categories other than for Religious Congregations, but there are some long-standing problems with the existing category structure in England. I am therefore putting forward for discussion a draft proposal to simplify the existing category structure. The proposal has three elements: (1) to remove duplication between existing categories; (2) to replace the existing hierarchy of categories for Church of England clergy with a simple structure based on positions in Religious Congregations; and (3) to create a limited number of new categories for Non-conformist Ministers in England.

I invite comments.

Stephen (Joint England Project Coordinator for Categories)

Comments

Thank you everyone for your considered and constructive comments. It seems that further thought is needed on the Church of England categories, both in terms of whether to use dioceses or counties for subcategories, and how any simplified structure would link into the parallel categories for the wider Anglican church.

However, there seems to be no objection to merging the overlapping categories "England, Clergy" and "Church of England Priests" into "Church of England Clergy". Merging duplicate categories is a normal part of Categorization Project housekeeping, so I propose to move ahead with that part of the proposal only for now.

The rest of the proposal can wait for further input from the Religion Project and others in due course.

Answer 1

I agree we need to simplify things, but I don't think county works as a subcategory of C of E clergy. The church structure is dioceses, archdeaconries, and parishes, many of which historically cut across county boundaries. The diocese of Durham, for instance, covered parishes in County Durham, Northumberland, Cumberland and Yorkshire. Does that mean the Bishop of Durham is classified under all four counties? If we are to keep it simple we need to follow the hierarchy of the organisation. I suggest:

• Category:Church of England Clergy
  •  Category:Archbishops of Canterbury, Church of England (also under Category:Anglican Archbishops)
  • Category:Archbishops of York, Church of England (also under Category:Anglican Archbishops)
  • Category:Diocese of X Clergy, Church of England (landing category)
    • Category:Bishops of X, Church of England (also under Category:Anglican Bishops), e.g., Category:Bishops of Durham, Church of England
    • categories for non-parochial roles, such as deans, archdeacons etc., e.g. Category:Archdeacons of Northumberland, Church of England
    • subcategories by parish if needed, e.g. Category:Rectors of Chipping Ongar, Category:Vicars of Herne, Category:Curates of Babraham. These might also have parent categories by place, as these existing categories do.

Comments

I think it's going to be really difficult to simplify this for most people. For instance, I have one in Croft, Leicestershire which is the diocese of Lincoln. Perhaps something like this is needed as a reference: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/myparish/projects/cwa/parishmasterlist/diocese/lincoln/

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Following church polity becomes difficult for those not familiar with it to get it right. Getting it right requires simplification. Too much hierarchy can lead to confusion.

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A difficulty with using Dioceses, like counties, is changing boundaries. Croft, Leicestershire, was in the Diocese of Peterborough 1839-1926 and is now in the Diocese of Leicester. At least for counties we have the "Historic Counties Standard" to provide a clear definition.

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Some historic counties changed boundaries too, at various times: they were not static. I would not regard boundary changes as a valid objection to using dioceses, and that seems to me the logical thing to do, for the Church of England at least. These sorts of boundary changes are things we have to accept.

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The English counties remained largely the same from the Middle Ages until 1974. The Church of England dioceses remained the same from the reign of Henry VIII to the 1830s. However, since the 1830s there have been very frequent changes as the Church has adapted to population growth and urbanization. The following dioceses have been created: Ripon 1836, Truro 1876, Liverpool 1880, Southwell 1884, Wakefield 1888, Birmingham 1905, Southwark 1905, Bury St Edmunds 1914, Chelmsford 1914, Sheffield 1914, Coventry 1918, Bradford 1919, Blackburn 1926, Derby 1927, Guildford 1927, Leicester 1927, Portsmouth 1927. This list was taken from a book about cathedrals. It does not provide information on the boundaries of the dioceses. There may have been changes of boundary apart from those associated with the establishment of a new diocese. I have no idea how to find out which diocese a parish was in on any date. I am afraid that categorizing Anglican clergy by diocese is completely impractical. We should categorize them by historic county. I think Anglican parish registers state the county of the parish a lot more often than they state the diocese.

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I agree that diocese is problematic. Most of the Religious Category structure tried to follow church polity and that lead to a lot of confusion. Trying to follow a structure that complicated would need specialists to sort things out.

I suppose if it is just clergy diocese could be workable but I think if they are coming from names in parish registers then determining diocese becomes problematic.

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I think there is no way to do categorization in England that takes into account the fact that many places have belonged to several different Anglican dioceses at different times in the last 200 years. The historic counties were always widely used for general geographical reference, also where religious matters are concerned.

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How are we supposed to find out the correct diocese? And what is the correct diocese? The Present diocese? The diocese from the reign of Henry VIII to about 1830? Or the diocese at the time of the source? For many places in England that may mean three different dioceses. And what do we do about clergy who were at a particular church both before and after a change of diocese?

Answer 2

I think this is a good start. I'll look at it in more detail but it does appear to avoid someone having to know exactly how the church works.

Answer 3

Very happy to see more nonconformist minister categories.

It would be good to have 

• Baptist Ministers
• Congregational Ministers
• Presbyterian Ministers

as the three main branches of nonconformist churches, plus

• Unitarian MInisters

I think we would need to retain Nonconformist Ministers (rather than have it as a landing page) for those who were active before the other denominations got going.  We therefore have 5 categories at this stage. and

• Methodist Ministers make 6!

Comments

You wouldn't include Methodist ministers?

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Thank you

Answer 4

Thank you for tackling this.  I am an ordinary WTer who comes across clergy of various denominations from time to time, as opposed to someone working on adding clergy, and the Church of England categories have completely baffled me in the past.  I will find the structure you've proposed much easier to use.

Answer 5

just looking at some of these, I see Church of England Archdeacons, and also Anglican Archdeacons, the description for both is basically the same, so would merge them and use an aka on the resulting category.  Repeat for all the others that have this duplicate configuration.

England Clergy has as sub-category England, Catholic Priests, so is not duplicating Church of England Clergy but would be England, Religious Occupations. 

Church of England Priests has a whole bunch of sub-categories that also use the term Priests in them, by diocese.  Since you believe the terminology is incorrect for CoE and should read Ministers, this would need a whole bunch of revisions going down the trail.  

All the above just from a logic viewpoint, don't know much about protestant clergy in general.

Comments

The existing categories use "Anglican" for the world-wide Anglican church, whereas "Church of England" is specific to England. So "Church of England Archdeacons" is a subcategory of "Anglican Archdeacons". The proposal is intended to relate to England only: the Anglican categories would not be affected.

As Helen points out below, there are some complications where Church of England clergy went overseas, particularly in colonial times.

Answer 6

This is such a hard topic to tackle, thank you for making a start on it. My comments give examples from my own family in the 19th C, I'm sure they are not unique.

The new category is headed Religious Categories in England but in the Colonial era the Anglican Church was not confined to England.  How will this simple structure  work  for those whose careers were not confined to England.

 Two personal  examples. (Simplified careers and frankly I've never attempted to categorise them under the present categories)

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Ford-6023. He was  ordained in England, became a missionary sent by the Society for the propagation of the gospel to  Basutoland,  various jobs including Canon of an Anglican Cathedral in South Africa.

His son. Ordained in South Africa, worked in Basutoland and South Africa. He  became C of E   chaplain in the British Army. Whilst in the  army  he was appointed a Canon of a Kenyan Cathedral. On leaving army  became a parish priest in England.

Re definitions . No problem using the phrase Clerk in Holy Orders , however, I know many anglican clergy ,  few of them are anglo -catholics but all were ordained as priests and before that as deacons. If you look at any page on the CCed database you'll find dates of ordination as priest and as deacon.(a few only as deacon)

See this page   from the Canons of the C of E. https://www.churchofengland.org/about/leadership-and-governance/legal-resources/canons-church-england/section-c

Answer 7

Thank you, Stephen, for recognising there is no consensus on the county/diocese issue, and that this needs to be looked at in a wider context with the help of the Religion Project. Account probably needs to be taken about what is sensible for other parts of the United Kingdom, and perhaps other countries.

I have just noticed that in the proposal you float the possibility of doing away with the separate categories for Archbishops of Canterbury and York, and for Bishops. This would not seem to me helpful. These are valuable categories, which bring together people who held significant positions, like other categories for people who held major roles (eg Prime Ministers or Presidents). If in the end the decision is that parochial clergy should be categorised by county rather than diocese, Archbishops and Bishops will not fit well into a county structure. A number of dioceses extend and/or extended into more than one county, and both Archdioceses cover a lot of counties. These categories seem to me best kept under a higher level religion category for England.