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Bishop, the office of oversight in Christian church government, carries a live tie of five distinct bodies each holding a variant, differently-accounted, stance toward it in this atlas: Churches of Christ, Latter-day Saints (Mormonism), Lutheranism, Methodism and The United Methodist Church. None of the five denies the office exists. All five keep the word and change what it names.

Kept as a Function, Not a Third Order

Lutheran churches keep bishops in many places, but the atlas records the Augsburg Confession as holding bishop and presbyter to be one office by divine right, differing in oversight rather than in order: the office is retained for good order, not because it is a third grade of ministry. Methodism reads the office the same way from the other direction: a Methodist bishop is, in the atlas's own record, an elder elected and consecrated to superintend, not a member of a third order, and John Wesley acted on the conviction that bishop and presbyter are the same order, which is why he could ordain at all. The United Methodist Church confirms the same reading in its own terms: bishops are elected from among the elders and hold the office of superintendency, and the church does not teach that episcopacy is a separate order of ministry.

Kept as a Different Office Entirely

Two of the five empty the word further. A Latter-day Saint bishop, the atlas records, is the unpaid lay leader of a ward of a few hundred members, called for a term of some years: the word is the same and the office is not. Churches of Christ use bishop, elder and overseer as three names for one congregational office, held by a plurality of men in each congregation, on the reading that the New Testament uses the words interchangeably. Set beside the bodies this atlas records holding the office as a distinct order, among them Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy and Anglicanism, and the bodies that reject it outright, among them Baptist, Calvinism and Presbyterianism, these five occupy a real middle ground: neither affirming a third order nor discarding the word.

Where To Read More

• BishopChristianity RolesThe office itself, five bodies holding a distinct account of it
• LutheranismChristianityBishop and presbyter one office by divine right; retained for good order
• MethodismChristianityAn elder elected to superintend, not a third order; Wesley's own reading
• The United Methodist ChurchChristianityElected from among the elders; episcopacy not taught as a separate order
• Latter-day Saints (Mormonism)ChristianityThe unpaid lay leader of a ward; the word is the same and the office is not
• Churches of ChristChristianityBishop, elder and overseer as three names for one congregational office