BISHOP of Edinburgh Rt Rev Brian Smith is expected to be chosen tomorrow as the new leader of the Scottish Episcopal Church.
He is the longest-serving of the church’s seven bishops and the favourite to be elected as Primus ”“ the equivalent of Archbishop ”“ in succession to Bishop of Glasgow Most Rev Dr Idris Jones, who is retiring after three years in the post.
The Primus in Scotland is usually the longest-serving Bishop, who retains his Diocese of course. This was also true in the US-TEC until the twentieth-century. Now the TEC PB has retained only the American Convocation of Churches as a diocesan, and usually a suffragen is appointed to do that. Of course the effort is underway to make the PB a kind of secular CEO, in a line-hierarchy. This is something that churches with metropolitans don’t have, strictly speaking, and of course it is a severe departure from the role the PB has exercised — even after the decision to cease having the longest-serving Bishop preside. It would turn TEC into a true national denomination, with bishops as ‘subordinate units’ rather than as Ordinaries, and with no obvious equivalence of the office of Bishops across a single Communion of Churches. Which is the way this has always been understood, rooted of course in scripture and anglican catholic practice.