Bishops, Priests, Deacons, and Lay People

The word Episcopal comes from the Greek word episkopos, meaning “bishop” or “overseer.” The Episcopal Church is therefore a church ordered around the ministry of bishops—but bishops do not exercise ministry alone.

Lay people

Lay people carry out the Church’s ministry in homes, workplaces, schools, neighborhoods, civic life, and the congregation. According to the Prayer Book, lay people represent Christ and his Church, bear witness to Christ wherever they may be, participate in the Church’s governance, and carry on Christ’s work of reconciliation in the world.

Lay people do not simply “help the clergy.” They exercise their own baptismal ministry and share responsibility for the Church’s worship, mission, leadership, stewardship, pastoral care, teaching, and public witness.

Deacons

Deacons represent Christ’s servant ministry. They have a particular responsibility to make the needs, concerns, and hopes of the world known to the Church—and to help lead the Church out into the world. In worship, the deacon commonly proclaims the Gospel, prepares the table, and dismisses the congregation for mission. The deacon stands at the meeting place between the gathered Church and the needs of the community.

Priests

Priests serve as pastors and teachers. They proclaim the Gospel, administer the sacraments, pronounce God’s forgiveness and blessing, and help equip the baptized for ministry. A priest is called to nurture the congregation’s common life, but the priest’s ministry is always exercised in communion with the bishop and in partnership with the people.

A priest does not independently “own” or govern a congregation. The priest shares leadership with the vestry, lay leaders, and the whole baptized community while remaining accountable to the bishop and the wider Church.

Bishops

Bishops are called to be chief pastors, teachers, and guardians of the faith and unity of the Church. They ordain priests and deacons, confirm and receive members, provide pastoral oversight, gather the diocese for shared mission, and connect local congregations with the Church across generations and throughout the world.

A bishop’s ministry reminds us that no parish exists by itself. Congregations are joined together in a diocese under the pastoral care of a bishop. Priests and deacons serve under the bishop’s authority and share in the bishop’s ministry. Lay people participate in diocesan conventions, councils, committees, elections, and ministries. Together, bishops, clergy, and lay people discern the mission of the Church.

Episcopal governance is therefore both episcopal and synodical: bishops exercise real spiritual and pastoral authority, while clergy and lay representatives share substantially in the Church’s decision-making. At General Convention, the House of Bishops and the House of Deputies—composed of priests, deacons, and lay people—share responsibility for the governance of the Episcopal Church.

Our Anglican History

The Episcopal Church comes from the Anglican tradition, which developed in England and took its distinctive shape during the Reformation of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Anglicanism retained the historic creeds, sacraments, episcopate, and patterns of catholic worship while also embracing Reformation commitments such as worship in the language of the people, the centrality of Scripture, and the importance of preaching.

This has sometimes been described as a via media, or “middle way.” This does not mean avoiding difficult questions or simply compromising between opposing positions. It means holding together truths that are sometimes separated: catholic and reformed, ancient and contemporary, sacramental and intellectual, personal faith and public responsibility.

Anglican Christianity came to North America through the Church of England. Following the American Revolution, Anglicans in the newly independent United States could no longer remain institutionally governed by a church connected to the British Crown. They organized an independent church while preserving Anglican worship, theology, and episcopal order.

Samuel Seabury, elected bishop of Connecticut, was consecrated in Scotland in 1784 because English bishops could not then consecrate someone who could not swear allegiance to the Crown. The Scottish Episcopal Church’s liturgical tradition also influenced the Eucharistic prayer of the emerging American Church. In 1789, the Church adopted its constitution and its first American Book of Common Prayer.



The Episcopal Church thus became the first Anglican province formed outside the British Isles—a self-governing church that remained in communion with the wider Anglican family.

The Worldwide Anglican Communion

The Episcopal Church is the United States-based province of the Worldwide Anglican Communion, a global family of 42 autonomous and interdependent churches serving in more than 165 countries. These churches share Anglican history, worship, episcopal leadership, and commitment to God’s mission, while each province governs itself in its own cultural and pastoral context.

The Anglican Communion is not governed like the Roman Catholic Church. The Archbishop of Canterbury is a focus of unity but does not exercise universal jurisdiction over Anglican provinces. The Episcopal Church governs itself through its own Constitution and Canons and through General Convention.

Our worldwide relationships are nurtured through four “Instruments of Communion”:

• The Archbishop of Canterbury
• The Lambeth Conference of bishops
• The Primates’ Meeting
• The Anglican Consultative Council, which includes bishops, clergy, and lay people

These instruments encourage prayer, consultation, mission, and relationship; they are not a central international government.



Anglicans do not agree about everything. Provinces sometimes differ significantly concerning theology, sexuality, gender, social questions, and the interpretation of Scripture. Communion does not mean uniformity. It means remaining in relationship, praying for one another, learning from one another, sharing in mission, and seeking unity amid real difference.

Connected Through Worship, Practice, and Mission

What connects Episcopalians is more than an organizational structure. We are connected through recognizable patterns of Christian life:

• Gathering around Word and Sacrament
• Following the rhythm of the Church Year
• Praying the Psalms and the Daily Office
• Reading Scripture within the worshiping community
• Sharing in the historic creeds
• Participating in the ministry of bishops
• Serving our neighbors and seeking the common good
• Working for reconciliation, justice, and peace

An Episcopalian traveling elsewhere in the United States—or visiting an Anglican church in another country—may encounter different languages, music, customs, and theological emphases. Yet the movement of the liturgy, the reading of Scripture, the prayers of the people, the celebration of the Eucharist, and the bishop’s role in the Church will often feel deeply familiar.

Our communion is not based upon everyone being the same. It is a communion created by Christ and practiced through prayer, sacrament, relationship, and shared mission.

A Church Growing Toward Fuller Inclusion

The Episcopal Church’s progressive commitments have developed through prayer, biblical study, theological reflection, protest, painful disagreement, and the courageous witness of people once excluded from leadership and sacramental life.

Women were historically denied many forms of leadership. In 1970, women were first seated as deputies to General Convention. In 1974, eleven women were ordained priests in Philadelphia before the Church’s canons formally permitted it. In 1976, General Convention changed the canons to affirm women’s eligibility for ordination to the priesthood and episcopate; Jacqueline Means became the first woman regularly ordained under the revised canon in 1977. Women now serve throughout the Church as lay leaders, deacons, priests, and bishops.

The movement toward full LGBTQ+ inclusion has likewise unfolded over decades. LGBTQ+ Episcopalians and their allies challenged the Church to recognize their relationships, vocations, dignity, and gifts. The Church increasingly prohibited discrimination in its life and ordination processes; in 2003, the General Convention consented to the election of Gene Robinson as the first openly gay bishop in the Anglican Communion; and in 2015, General Convention authorized marriage rites available to same-sex couples.

The Church has also taken steps toward the fuller recognition and protection of transgender and nonbinary people in the life, leadership, and sacramental ministry of the Church.

These developments have not been without disagreement or cost. Nor is the work complete. Women, LGBTQ+ people, people of color, people with disabilities, and others still encounter barriers within the Church. The Episcopal Church continues to be called to examine its structures, repent of discrimination, and become more fully the community its Baptismal Covenant describes.



For many Episcopalians, inclusion is not a departure from Christian faith but an expression of it. When we promise to “seek and serve Christ in all persons” and “respect the dignity of every human being,” we acknowledge that every person bears God’s image and that the gifts of the Holy Spirit cannot be restricted by gender, sexual orientation, or gender identity.

A Faithful and Questioning Community

Being an Episcopalian does not mean having every question answered. Anglicanism makes room for mystery, intellectual inquiry, faithful disagreement, and continuing discernment. We receive Scripture as the Word of God, read within the living tradition of the Church and under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. We bring reason, scholarship, experience, and the insights of the wider community to our interpretation.

This openness is not an absence of conviction. Episcopalians affirm the historic creeds, proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord, celebrate the sacraments, and commit themselves to following Christ. At the same time, we recognize that human understanding is limited and that the Holy Spirit continues to lead the Church into deeper truth.

To be an Episcopalian, then, is to live within a community that is:

• Ancient in its faith and open to continuing reformation
• Sacramental in worship and active in the world
• Grounded in Scripture and willing to ask difficult questions
• Governed by bishops and shaped by the participation of all the baptized
• Rooted in a local congregation and connected to a worldwide communion
• Committed to tradition while listening for the movement of the Holy Spirit
• Striving—imperfectly but faithfully—to welcome every person into the fullness of Christ’s life

Ultimately, being an Episcopalian means responding to God’s grace with the words we repeat throughout the Baptismal Covenant: “I will, with God’s help.”