Church Law in the United Kingdom

Abstract

This entry examines the laws and other regulatory instruments of a range of Christian churches in Great Britain, many of which also have a global reach. These legal instruments are pervasive in the lives of churches and regulate their ministry and government, doctrine, worship and rites of passage, church property, and relations with the state. These laws are examined here in the wider context of what churches share juridically in the form of the Statement of Principles of Christian Law, issued in Rome in 2016 by an ecumenical panel of jurists and theologians and currently feeding into the work of the World Council of Churches (see Doe 2021).

Keywords

• polity
• the christian church
• christian law
• common principles
• ecumenism
• ecclesiology
• ecclesiastical