The word is shared with episcopal Christianity and almost nothing else is. A Latter-day Saint bishop is not in apostolic succession as Catholic, Orthodox and Anglican churches understand it, has no diocese, ordains nobody to a professional clergy because there is none, and confirms nobody, since confirmation in the movement is performed by Melchizedek priesthood holders and frequently by a father. He is not a bishop in a hierarchy of bishops; he is the presiding officer of one congregation. The office descends from the calling of Edward Partridge in 1831, whose original charge was to administer the consecration of property rather than to lead worship, and its pastoral character developed afterward.
The most distinctive feature is that it ends. A bishop is released, not retired, and the following Sunday he sits in the congregation as an ordinary member while a man he may himself have called now presides. Latter-day Saints regard this as unremarkable and outsiders regularly do not, because it removes the possibility of a clerical career.
The office has also been the subject of serious public criticism, most of it directed at the interviews. An untrained volunteer conducting private worthiness interviews with adolescents, including questions touching on sexual conduct, is a structure with obvious risks, and the church has changed its rules more than once in response, including a 2018 instruction permitting any member to bring another adult to any interview.