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Religious Occupation Categories in England

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Religious Occupation Categories in England

This page sets out initial draft proposals to rationalise the categories for Religious Occupations in England, to remove duplication and overlap, and improve consistency.

It is not the purpose of WikiTree to provide a theological encyclopedia. The Religious Occupations categories should provide useful groupings of people who were significantly occupied in serving Religious Congregations; and not to divide people into different streams of theological opinion. The landing level categories should therefore be “X Church/Chapel, Ministers/Vicars/Rectors etc.”. It may be useful to group the landing level occupations by denominations where there was significant movement/exchange of personnel within the same tradition.

Existing categories

All of the England religious occupations categorised as such appear to be under:

Category:England, Religious Occupations, which is itself nested under Category:Religious Occupations and Category:England, Occupations. See also the complete hierarchy https://plus.wikitree.com/function/WTCatNavigate/Category.htm?Category=England%2C_Religious_Occupations&Levels=3.

Sub-categories:


There are lots of categories for various Vicars and Rectors of the established Church of England which are under their respective churches and/or places, not categorised as Religious Occupations.

Problems

1: Duplicated Categories

“England, Clergy” seems to duplicate other categories. Either “clergy” is a generic term for all ordained ministers, in which case it duplicates “England, Religious Occupations”; or it specifically relates to the Established Church, in which case it duplicates “Church of England Clergy”.

The term “Priest” is sometimes avoided in the Church of England. The liturgy prefers the generic term “Minister”. Ministers of the Church of England are ordained into the “order of the priesthood” and are sometimes formally referred to as “Clerks in Holy Orders” - from which the word “Clergy” derives. The categories “Church of England Priests” and “Church of England Clergy” thus appear to be duplicates.

“Category:England, Clergy” and “Category:Church of England Priests” will therefore both be merged into “Category:Church of England Clergy”. A small number of profiles have been moved from "England, Clergy" to the appropriate Non-conformist category.

2: Over complicated hierarchy within the Church of England

Is there a need to separate out the various levels of the Church of England career hierarchy? Deacons, Deans, Bishops etc. are all Clergy at various stages of their career.

It is proposed instead that they are categorised by their job titles, linked directly to the Religious Congregations which they serve. There are hundreds of existing categories: they could be grouped geographically, by diocese or by county (the latter more easily understood by most).

3: Sub-categories needed for major Non-conformist denominations

Considerable work is being undertaken within the England Project on Non-conformist communities, particularly in the London area. It would be useful to have sub-categories for Non-conformist Ministers in some demoninations, as they moved within closely connect communities with significant genealogical connections.

Proposal

The proposed simplified category structure would be as follows:

Category:England, Religious Occupations

English non-conformist ministers would need to be identified from the existing global categories for Baptist, Congregational, Methodist and Unitarian Ministers and allocated to the new sub-categories for England.





Collaboration


Comments: 3

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Meredith-1182 David (Meredith) Loring
Perhaps Catholic Clergy should be Roman Catholic Clergy. My father would have argued that all Christian priests are catholic as in the one catholic and apostolic faith.
posted by David (Meredith) Loring
Heathcote-126 Stephen Heathcote
Good point! Thank you! I will amend the proposal accordingly.
posted by Stephen Heathcote
Pickup-177 Trevor Pickup
Dear Stephen,

In terms of the nonconformists, I have been using the Category:England,_Nonconformist_Ministers for the majority of profiles but I have also been using Category:Baptist_Ministers Category:Unitarian_Ministers Category:Congregational_Ministersand Category:Methodist_Ministers. I think it is only a matter of time until we will need these within the England:religious occupations. I have been adding the English Baptists to Category:Baptist_Ministers and had planned to suggest a specific category when I had enough profiles to make it relevant.

In terms of the current structures and to add to the complexity, there are already Category:British_Methodist_Ministers and most of the Category:Wesleyan_Methodist_Ministers appear to be English.

We also have Category:Bible_Christian_Ministers who are all English, a subset of the Methodists.

We also have Category:Congregational_Union_of_England_and_Wales_Ministers within the congregationists.

Do you want to ignore Category:England,_Missionaries, on the basis that they are not linked to religious congregations. That would be reasonable.

There are 29 older Puritan MInisters in a single category Category:Puritan_Ministers but most of these are English!

Hope this helps

Trev

posted by Trevor Pickup
edited by Trevor Pickup

Categories: Heathcote-126