Bishops in Calvinism

This article is about the office of bishop in Calvinism. For the office in general, see Bishop.

The place of Bishops in Calvinism is a complex issue. They are generally absent from classic Reformed church polity, although there are both present and historic exceptions.

Background

Despite the fact that the Genevan church operated without bishops, Calvin was not hostile to the office of bishop, although many of his later followers later would develop that hostility.^[1] Instead the church in Calvin's Geneva operated with pastors, elders and deacons overseen by the Company of Pastors and the city’s consistory. This template was widely imitated by most Reformed churches who embraced a presbyterial–synodal structure in which authority is exercised by ordained presbyters (elders) in graded courts (session/consistory, presbytery/classis, synod). In this model, no single prelate holds jurisdiction over a diocese, and historic diocesan episcopacy is usually rejected as lacking explicit New Testament warrant. And although there are exceptions, standard Reformed confessional statements such as the Second Helvetic Confession and the Westminster Form of Presbyterial Church Government describe ministry in terms of pastors/teachers, elders and deacons, not diocesan bishops.

Terminology

Most Reformed bodies teach that all ministers are presbyters and that oversight belongs to assemblies of elders rather than to individual bishops. Moderators, presidents, or stated clerks chair meetings but do not possess diocesan or monarchical authority. This stance distinguishes Reformed polity from the episcopal systems of Anglicanism, Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy.

Today, where the title bishop occurs in Calvinist settings it is typically:

• Synodal–administrative: an elected presbyter chairing or representing a district under binding synod decisions;
• Ecumenical–constitutional: a title retained in united churches for legal continuity, with powers limited by Reformed synodality;
• Anglican–Reformed: episcopacy maintained within Anglican polity while espousing Reformed-leaning doctrine.^{[citation needed]}

Continental Calvinism

Bishops are absent from mainstream Calvinism in most Continental Calvinist traditions such as The Netherlands, South Africa, Switzerland and France.

Eastern Europe

The Reformed Church in Hungary and the Reformed Diocese of Transylvania in Romania are historically Calvinist but organise life into districts led by elected bishops (püspök).^[2] These bishops preside and represent their districts but are constrained by synodical governance and do not claim apostolic succession in a sacramental sense.^{[citation needed]}

The Polish Reformed Church bodies historically used superintendent (sometimes translated as bishop^[3]) for regional leaders under synodal control.

Union Churches

Certain united or federation churches with substantial Reformed components employ bishop or superintendent as a constitutional office shared across Lutheran–Reformed unions. These churches mostly tend to be in either the mostly German United tradition such as the Prussian Union of Churches) or the more recent Leuenberg tradition. Authority remains legally synodal rather than prelatical.^{[citation needed]}

Presbyterianism

Main article: Bishops in the Church of Scotland

The national Church of Scotland and most Scottish Presbyterian churches reject episcopacy; leadership is through kirk sessions, presbyteries and General Assembly moderators. Early Scottish reformers briefly used the title superintendent (not sacramental bishops) for regionally tasked ministers. However due to Charles I of England's appointment of Scottish Bishops to try to bring more ceremonial Anglican forms into Scotland, the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland expelled the bishops, starting the Bishops' Wars and hostility to bishops became a tenet of Scottish Calvinist thought.

After an attempt to restore bishops to Scotland after the Restoration in 1660, although this was ended when William III ascended to the throne in 1688 Now the Presbyterian settlement has dispensed with diocesan oversight in favour of presbyteries and synods.^[4][5]

Today the term bishop when used in the Church of Scotland refers to a minister who is placed in charge of a person training for the ministry is referred to as the student's bishop.^[6] Most of the former mission churches from the Presbyterian tradition, such as America, South Korea and Nigeria follow presbyterial polity without diocesan bishops.

Anglicanism

In the years after the English Reformation the Church of England was part of Reformed Christianity^[7][8] with leaders such as Thomas Cranmer, influenced by Calvinist theologians.^[9] As with Lutheranism, the Church of England retained elements of Catholicism such as bishops and vestments, thus sometimes being called "but halfly Reformed" or a middle way between Lutheranism and Reformed Christianity, being closer liturgically to the former and theologically aligned with the latter.^[10][11][12] Beginning in the 17th century, Anglicanism broadened to the extent that Reformed theology is no longer the sole dominant theology of Anglicanism.^[13]

There was a Puritan subculture within Anglicanism that although in the reign of Elizabeth I aimed mostly at perceived retained Catholic practices in worship (many of which were in Cathedrals), although there was also some opposition to Bishops.

When James I, who was already king of Presbyterian Scotland and raised a Calvinist, arrived in London to take become King of England, the Puritan clergy presented him with the Millenary Petition, allegedly signed by a thousand English clergy, to abolish items such as wedding rings as "outward badges of Popish errours".^[14][15] James, however, equated English Puritans with Scottish Presbyterians and, after banning religious petitions, told the Hampton Court Conference of 1604 that he preferred the status quo^[16] with the monarch ruling the church through the bishops saying that if bishops were put out of power, "I know what would become of my supremacy, No bishop, no King. When I mean to live under a presbytery I will go to Scotland again.^[17]

During the reign of Charles I the Calvinist Puritans had taken up opposition to bishops with both petitions and riots against them.^[18]

William III, although also a Calvinist, kept bishops in the Church of England, partly through political calculation but also through an interpretation of his Coronation Oath that obliged him to defend the "Protestant Reformed Religion Established by Law". However his government did end Episcopacy in Scotland, but due to political calculation rather than personal belief.

See also

• Presbyterian polity
• Reformed church
• Episcopal polity
• Superintendent (ecclesiastical)
• Moderator of the General Assembly

Notes

1. MacCulloch 2009, p. 633.
2. Nichols, Stephen (August 31, 2016). "The Hungarian Reformed Bishops (with a special guest)". 5 Minutes in Church History. W. Robert Godfrey (guest). Ligonier Ministries. Retrieved 23 September 2025.
3. "Ks. Semko Koroza wybrany na biskupa Kościoła reformowanego" [Rev. Semko Koroza elected bishop of the Reformed Church]. Polish Ecumenical Council (ekumenia.pl) (in Polish). Polish Ecumenical Council. 21 May 2022. Retrieved 23 September 2025.
4. The First Book Of Discipline (1560) - The Fifth Head Concerning the Provisions for the Ministers, and for the Distribution of the Rents and Possessions Justly Pertaining to the Kirk - The Names of the Places of Residence, and Several Dioceses of the Superintendents
5. Kirk, James (1980). "The Polities of the Best Reformed Kirks': Scottish Achievements and English Aspirations in Church Government after the Reformation". The Scottish Historical Review. 59 (167 part 1): 30. JSTOR 25529356.
6. "Record56-42-46" (PDF). churchservicesociety.org.
7. González, Justo L. (1987). A History of Christian Thought: From the Protestant Reformation to the twentieth century. Abingdon Press. ISBN 978-0-687-17184-2.
8. Robinson, Peter D. (2020-02-14). "Is Anglicanism Reformed?". The North American Anglican. Retrieved 2024-04-13. If one looks at the two main confessional documents of the English Reformation, the (39) Articles of Religion, and the Book of Common Prayer, a series of propositions emerge that definitely put the Church of England into that strand of the Augustinian Theological tradition which we call 'Protestantism' and furthermore, to put it into the subset known as 'Reformed.' 
9. Samuel, Chimela Meehoma (28 April 2020). Treasures of the Anglican Witness: A Collection of Essays. Partridge Publishing. ISBN 978-1-5437-5784-2. In addition to his emphasis on Bible reading and the introduction to the Book of Common Prayer, other media through which Cranmer sought to catechize the English people were the introduction of the First Book of Homilies and the 39 Articles of Religion. Together with the Book of Common Prayer and the Forty-Two Articles (which were later reduced to thirty-nine), the Book of Homilies stands as one of the essential texts of the Edwardian Reformation, and they all helped to define the shape of Anglicanism then, and in the subsequent centuries. More so, the Articles of Religion, whose primary shape and content were given by Archbishop Cranmer and Bishop Ridley in 1553 (and whose final official form was ratified by Convocation, the Queen, and Parliament in 1571), provided a more precise interpretation of Christian doctrine to the English people. According to John H. Rodgers, they "constitute the formal statements of the accepted, common teaching put forth by the Church of England as a result of the Reformation."
10. Haigh, Christopher (2006). "The English Reformations and the Making of the Anglican Church" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 6 April 2024. Retrieved 6 April 2024.
11. Anglican and Episcopal History. Historical Society of the Episcopal Church. 2003. p. 15. William Monter describing the Church of England as "a unique style of Protestantism, a via media between the Reformed and Lutheran traditions." MacCulloch has described Cranmer as seeking a middle way between Zurich and Wittenberg but elsewhere remarks that the Church of England was "nearer Zurich and Geneva than Wittenberg.
12. Robinson, Peter (2 August 2012). "The Reformed Face of Anglicanism". The Old High Churchman. Retrieved 3 February 2020. Cranmer's personal journey of faith left its mark on the Church of England in the form of a Liturgy that remains to this day more closely allied to Lutheran practice, but that liturgy is couple to a doctrinal stance that is broadly, but decidedly Reformed.
13. Hampton, Stephen (29 May 2008). Anti-Arminians: The Anglican Reformed Tradition from Charles II to George I. Oxford University Press. p. 4. ISBN 978-0-19-155985-3.
14. Croft 2004, p. 156.
15. Willson 1963, p. 201.
16. Willson 1963, p. 200.
17. Willson 1963, p. 198.
18. Wedgwood 1970, p. 37.

Sources

• Croft, Pauline (2004). King James. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 0-333-61395-3.
• MacCulloch, Diarmaid (2009). A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years. Allen Lane. ISBN 978-0-7139-9869-6.
• Wedgwood, C. V. (1966). The King's Peace: 1637–1641. London: C. Nicholls.
• Wedgwood, C. V. (1970). The King's War: 1641–1647. London: Fontana.
• Willson, David Harris (1963). King James VI & I. London: Jonathan Cape Ltd. ISBN 0-224-60572-0.