One Church, Two Jurisdictions

The church is organised as a single body for the whole island, with two provinces, Armagh and Dublin, whose dioceses cross the border in several places. That has been true since long before the border existed and the church declined to divide when it appeared. In practice it means a General Synod whose members come from two states with different laws on marriage, education and charity, and a church that has to legislate for both at once.

Doctrinally it is Anglican and, by the standards of the communion, on the reformed side. It retains the Thirty-Nine Articles and the preamble to its constitution states its continuity with the church of earlier centuries while rejecting the jurisdiction of Rome. Its liturgy runs from the older Book of Common Prayer tradition to the revised book of 2004, which prints traditional and contemporary forms in parallel.

It has generally moved earlier than its neighbours on questions of ministry. Women were ordained as deacons and then as priests from 1990, and in 2013 Pat Storey was consecrated Bishop of Meath and Kildare, the first woman to become a bishop in any of the Anglican churches of Britain and Ireland. On other contested questions the synod has proceeded slowly and by agreed statement rather than by vote, which reflects a body that has to hold two political communities together and knows it.