page_title: Anglican ministry
section_title: Priests
hierarchical_section_title: Anglican ministry / Threefold order / Priests
caption_attribution_description: English: Picture of Anglican priest in choir habit — cassock, surplice, academic hood (University of Wales BD) and tippet — taken by Gareth Hughes on 21 October 2005.
context_page_description: The Anglican ministry is both the leadership and agency of Christian service in the Anglican Communion. "Ministry" commonly refers to the office of ordained clergy: the threefold order of bishops, priests and deacons. More accurately, Anglican ministry includes many laypeople who devote themselves to the ministry of the church, either individually or in lower/assisting offices such as lector, acolyte, sub-deacon, Eucharistic minister, cantor, musicians, parish secretary or assistant, warden, vestry member, etc. Ultimately, all baptized members of the church are considered to partake in the ministry of the Body of Christ. "...[I]t might be useful if Anglicans dropped the word minister when referring to the clergy...In our tradition, ordained persons are either bishops, priests, or deacons, and should be referred to as such."
  Each of the provinces of the Anglican Communion has a high degree of independence from the other provinces, and each of them have slightly different structures for ministry, mission and governance. However, personal leadership is always vested in a member of the clergy
context_section_description: The overwhelming majority of ordained ministers in the Anglican Communion are priests (also called presbyters). Priestly ministry is derived from that of bishops in that they are licensed to a cure of souls by a diocesan or area bishop. The collegiate nature of the presbyterate is acknowledged every time a new priest is ordained as other priests share with the ordaining bishop in the laying on of hands. All priests are entitled to be styled The Reverend and many male priests are called Father. Some senior priests have other titles. Many member churches ordain women to the priesthood. There is as yet no widely used alternative title to "Father" for female priests. Priests traditionally wear a (usually) black cassock or clergy shirt - although many now wear clergy shirts in other colours. In worship, the traditional vesture for Anglican priests is their choir dress of cassock, surplice, academic hood (if one has been awarded) and a black tippet. However, at the Eucharist, the revived pre-Reformation vestments of alb, stole, chasuble and occasionally the amice and maniple, are worn in large sections of the Communion. Even in cases where a priest is not presiding at the Eucharist, he or she may wear a surplice or alb with a stole.
caption: A priest in traditional Anglican choir dress.
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