General Synod

Information about General Synod

The General Synod is the title of the governing body of some church organizations.

Church of England

In the Church of England, General Synod was instituted in 1970 and is the culmination of a process of rediscovering self-government for the Church of England that had started in the 1850s.

The General Synod is unique in that it is the only body to which Parliament has delegated the power to pass Measures, which become part of English law. Prior to 1919, any change to the Church's worship or governance had to be by Act of Parliament. In 1919, following a period when Parliament could rarely be bothered to make time for legislating on church business, the Church Assembly, the predecessor of the General Synod, was given the power to create legislation on most matters to do with the Church of England. If Parliament accepts a Measure, then it becomes law; if MPs or members of the House of Lords are not happy with a Measure then they can vote to reject it, but not amend it. Once a measure has been agreed ("deemed expedient") by both Houses of Parliament, it is presented for the Royal Assent, and printed with the Acts of parliament for the year in question.

General Synod is elected every five years by a system of Single Transferable Vote and each session is officially opened by the monarch.

The Synod is divided into the House of Bishops, the House of Clergy and the House of Laity. All diocesan bishops are members of the House of Bishops ex-officio; in addition, seven suffragan bishops are elected by all suffragan bishops. Members of the House of Clergy are elected by the clergy in each Diocese. Members of the House of Laity are elected by lay members of the Deanery Synod in each Diocese. There are 482 General Synod members in total.

There are two or three synodical sessions per year (4-5 days each), one or two in Church House, Westminster, the other at the University of York.

General Synod deals with three main areas:
  • Central church business
  • Relations with other churches
  • Public issues
The General Synod elects some members to the Archbishops' Council.

General Synods of other churches within the Anglican Communion

Episcopal Church of the United States

In the Episcopal Church in the United States of America, the equivalent is General Convention.

Other Churches

The United Church of Christ in the United States also calls their main governing body a General Synod. It meets every two years and consists of over 600 delegates from various congregations and conferences.

The Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church has as its highest Church court the General Synod. The ARP General Synod meets yearly (in recent years, it has, almost without exception, been held at Bonclarken). The delegates to the General Synod of the ARP Church are the elder representatives elected from each church's Session and all ministers from all presbyteries that comprise the Church (excluding ministers and elders from the independent ARP Synods of Mexico and Pakistan).

Other uses

In the North American Lutheran tradition, General Synod refers to a church body (denomination) which existed from 1820-1918. See General Synod (Lutheran).

External links

See Also

  • How the Church of England is organised
The Church of England is the officially established Christian church[1] in England, and is the "mother" of the worldwide Anglican Communion, the oldest among its nearly 40 independent national churches.
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19th century - 20th century - 21st century
1940s  1950s  1960s  - 1970s -  1980s  1990s  2000s
1967 1968 1969 - 1970 - 1971 1972 1973

Year 1970 (MCMLXX
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Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

Type Bicameral
Houses House of Commons
House of Lords
Speaker of the House of Commons Michael Martin MP
Lord Speaker Hélène Hayman, PC

Members 1377 (646 Commons, 731 Peers)
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The granting of Royal Assent is the formal method by which a constitutional monarch completes the legislative process of lawmaking by formally assenting to an Act of Parliament.
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Single transferable vote (STV) is a preferential voting system designed to minimize wasted votes and provide proportional representation while ensuring that votes are explicitly for candidates rather than party lists.
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Westminster


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University of York is a campus university in York, England. Over 30 departments and centres cover a wide range of subjects in the arts, social sciences, science and technology.
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Anglican Communion is a world-wide affiliation of Anglican Churches. There is no single "Anglican Church" with universal juridical authority, since each national or regional church has full autonomy.
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Anglican Church of Australia, a member church of the Anglican Communion, was previously officially known as the Church of England in Australia and Tasmania (renamed in 1881). It is the second largest church in Australia, behind the Roman Catholic Church in Australia.
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General Synod of the Anglican Church of Canada is the chief governing and legislative body of the Anglican Church of Canada (ACC), the sole Canadian representative of the Anglican Communion.
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The Church of Ireland (Irish: Eaglais na hÉireann) is an autonomous province of the Anglican Communion, operating seamlessly across the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.
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Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia is a church of the Anglican Communion serving New Zealand, Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, and the Cook Islands. The primate of the church, known as the Archbishop of New Zealand, is the Most Reverend William Brown Turei.
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Scottish Episcopal Church (Scottish Gaelic: Eaglais Easbaigeach na h-Alba) is a Christian denomination in Scotland and a member of the Anglican Communion. It consists of seven dioceses in Scotland.
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The Episcopal Church is the official name of the Province of the Anglican Communion in the United States.[1][2][3][4] The Church was organized shortly after the American Revolution and became the first autonomous Anglican province outside
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United Church of Christ

Classification Protestant
Orientation Mainline
Polity modified Congregationalist
Origin 1957:
Merge of Evangelical and Reformed Church and the Congregational Christian Churches
Associations Churches Uniting In Christ
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Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church

The seal of the ARPC.
Classification Protestant
Orientation Calvinist
Polity Presbyterian
Origin 1782: Philadelphia
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Bonclarken is a conference center located in Flat Rock, North Carolina (between Asheville, North Carolina and Greenville, South Carolina) operated by the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church (ARP).
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Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church

The seal of the ARPC.
Classification Protestant
Orientation Calvinist
Polity Presbyterian
Origin 1782: Philadelphia
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Anthem
Himno Nacional Mexicano


Capital
(and largest city) Mexico City

Official languages Spanish (
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Motto
اتحاد، تنظيم، يقين محکم
Ittehad, Tanzim, Yaqeen-e-Muhkam   (Urdu)
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Lutheranism is a major branch of Protestant Christianity that identifies with the teachings of the sixteenth-century German reformer Martin Luther. Luther's efforts to reform the theology and practice of the Church launched the Protestant Reformation and, though it was not
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The General Synod (officially known as the Evangelical Lutheran General Synod of the United States of North America) was an association of Lutheran church bodies in America.
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