What is a Vicar?
The term vicar has numerous meanings, and has been used in Christian religions for thousands of years. The pope of the Catholic Church holds the title of Vicar of Christ, or Vicarius Christi. In essence he is the earthly representative of God, and has received his appointment from Christ. If you think of the word vicarious, you can get a sense of what the term vicar means. To live vicariously, is to live without direct experience of something, but rather through something else. Someone can live vicariously through another person, through watching TV or reading books, to name a few examples. These things, which are not direct experiences, are the vicars of the person experiencing things second hand; they represent the experience without being the experience.
In fact, in various religions, the vicar is the vicarious symbol of the church, or better defined as a representative of a church. The term has since come to have many fine distinctions about how a church leader or minister is paid, considered. It can also designate the status or training of a person working in a ministerial capacity in a church.
In the modern sense, a Lutheran vicar is essentially completing his internship and hasn’t received ordination. After having completed school, the vicar will serve a parish for a year and is paid a small stipend for this service. This is his training ground, and the appointment he receives to a parish is almost always a year in length. He can then become a pastor or rector of a church, or stay on to assist the parish in which he began his work. The Lutheran vicar is paid by either the church in which he works or by a larger church structure.
Most commonly, we see the term vicar used in describing members of the Anglican and Episcopal clergy. The early vicar was designated as such depending upon how he was paid. Generally a rector of a parish lived on the tithes and donations of a self-sustaining parish. The overhead organization of the Anglican Church would appoint a vicar, and pay him when a single church could not yet sustain itself.
Often a newly organized church, which cannot yet sustain itself through donations, is called a mission. Its leader, as representative of the Episcopal or Anglican Church is the vicar of the mission. He will continue to receive a salary from the overhead organization until the church is well established and can afford to support a rector. At this point, the vicar may become a rector, and derives all or at least most of his salary from the church he has established.
Today the term vicar is mostly in use in the UK. Most priests refer to themselves as ministers or clergy. Except with the Lutheran church, you are likely to see most ministers in Protestant denominations designate themselves as priests or ministers, since they act with the same authority, regardless of how their pay is structured. You still see the term rector in wide use, since the rector is normally the head of a single church and is generally in charge of the financial aspects of the church.
Written by Tricia Ellis-Christensen
