A Brief History of Parish Councils To understand the history and development of Parish Councils a contrast has to be made between parish councils in the 1960s and 70s with councils in the 80s and 90s. One difference, which is overwhelmingly apparent, is the amount of authority and control the parish council has. This was, in the 60s and 70s, the subject of much disagreement. Many early authors believed that councils should promote executive authority. …showed first 75 words of 655 total…

…showed last 75 words of 655 total…parish" to "pastoral" councils. And one may well dispute how just it is to tar earlier "parish" councils as uniformly administrative in orientation, as rigidly parliamentary in procedure, and as exclusively temporal in focus. But almost everyone would agree that in the mid 1980s, something crystallized around the term pastoral council: a distinctly American approach to parish consultation which viewed councils as planning bodies, which promoted parishioner-pastor discernment, and which had a deliberately prayerful spirituality.