PAROCHIAL VISION
The future of the English parish
By Nick Spencer. Paternoster. 171 pages
ISBN 1 84227 238 1
An intriguing historical overview of the development of the parish system in England, leading to a fascinating vision of the future based on one stage in our pre-parochial past - the age of the minsters. By 800 AD no settlement in lowland England would have been more than six miles from a minster, Spencer argues.
The word and the institution itself are related to the monastery, but the primary concept was not that of seclusion from the world, but of a pastoral and evangelistic centre, from which clergy went out to the surrounding villages to preach, teach and minister to people. And this network covered the land before parish churches did.
