Parish (Church of England)

The parish with its local parish church is the basic unit of the Church of England. The parish within the Church of England structure has its roots in the Roman Catholic Church and survived the Reformation largely untouched. Church of England parishes are currently each within one of 44 dioceses divided between the provinces of Canterbury, with thirty dioceses and York with fourteen. There are 12,600 Church of England parishes in all.

Each parish is administered by a parish priest who may be assisted in his pastoral duties by a curate or curates, who are also ordained but not the parish priest. There are wide variations in the size of parishes and church-going populations. A parish priest may have responsibility for one parish or for two or more and some are part of a team ministry. By extension the term parish refers not only to the territorial unit but to the people of its community or congregation.

From the Greek paroikia, the dwellingplace of the priest, eighth Archbishop of Canterbury Theodore of Tarsus (c.602–690) applied to the Anglo-Saxon township unit, where it existed, the ecclesiastical term parish.

First attested in English late 13th century, the word parish comes from the Old French paroisse, in turn from Latin paroecia, which is the latinisation of the Greek παροικία (paroikia), "sojourning in a foreign land", itself from πάροικος (paroikos), "dwelling beside, stranger, sojourner", which is a compound of παρά (para), " beside, by, near" + οἶκος (oikos), "house".

The introduction of Christianity and its development under Æthelberht of Kent (c. 560–616) required an organization for ecclesiastical administrative purposes. From the Greek paroikia, the dwellingplace of the priest, eighth Archbishop of Canterbury Theodore of Tarsus (c. 602–690) applied the ecclesiastical term parish to the Anglo-Saxon township format where already in existence. Generally the township and parish coincided but in the North some townships may have been combined and in the South, where populations were bigger, two or more parishes might be made out of one township. Townships not included in a parish were extra-parochial. There may have been much less uniformity than these general guidelines imply. Extended since the 973-975 reign of Edgar (c. 943–975) the process of parish organisation appears to have been completed during the fifty-year reign of Edward III (1312–1377).

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