‘The world is my parish,’ John Wesley famously declared. And with that slogan he got on his horse and proclaimed to as many people as he could the Good News of Jesus. His Church of England background enticed him to use the word ‘parish’. The Church of England, the Established Church of this realm, exists in its parishes. England on this view is chopped up into workable entities, just as the British Army is made up (or used to be made up) of county regiments. The basic unit engendered affection and loyalty.
The parish elicits (or used to elicit) the same attachment from English men and women. It is like the English language. We don’t think about it but it is our common inheritance. It is part of who we are. Even some of those who cannot subscribe to Anglican tenets feel constrained to say that they may be atheists but they are Church of England atheists.
As far as the word ‘parish’ is concerned, the etymology is enigmatic. From the Greek it means living alongside. We might say that it means a neighbour. In common use it came to means a township or village. The weight of the word lay in its definition of a community. When England was, as we say, a Christian country, it so happened that the residents were both subjects and church members. As dissent and the decay of belief took place, the parish came to lose its comprehensive meaning. It became, as it now is, a term meaning on the one hand a territorial unit and on the other a church unit. We now have parish councils and parochial church councils.
Which brings us to a recognition of the fact that the word ‘parish’ has unfortunately acquired a cousin with a restricted significance. The word ‘parochial’ hangs round the neck like the proverbial albatross. It carries with it the notion that there is no need to look over the wall; all we need is found in the parish. Indeed, if it is not, then so much the worse for the world. We can learn nothing by going beyond the parish and discovering what is going on elsewhere. The word has come to suggest small-mindedness, the need to get out more.
And the expression ‘parochial system’ is similarly tainted. Not so much by any inherent myopia. More by a lack of credibility. When a parish meant an area with one church and one incumbent, things were straightforward. But when a parish shares an incumbent with half a dozen – or more – other units, credibility is strained.
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