- Bishop of Rangoon
Bishopric
bishopric=Rangoon
province=Calcutta
diocese=Rangoon
founded=9th century
incumbent=Now a province
signs=RangoonThe Lord Bishop of Rangoon was the Anglican
bishop responsible for thediocese of Rangoon in the province ofCalcutta from 1877 to 1970. BeforehandBritish Burma , then part of theIndian Empire , had come under the guidance of theBishop of Calcutta , Metropolitan ofIndia . In 1966 the last non-Burmese bishop was evicted by the Burmese authorities and in 1970 the Diocese of Rangoon became the Church of the Province of Burma, and the bishop was elevated toArchbishop in that church.Title
He was officially styled "The Right Reverend Father in God, (Name), by Divine Providence Lord Bishop of Rangoon", but this full title was rarely used, the majority of the time the bishop being addressed either "Bishop" or "Lord Bishop of Rangoon". In signing his name, the bishop's surname would be replaced by the name of his diocese. Therefore "J.O.E. Bloggs" would become "J.O.E. Rangoon" in official correspondence.
Pay & residence
In 1884 the pay of the Bishop was the not insubstantial salary of £960 per annum. The official residence of the Bishop was throughout the existence of the diocese Bishop's Court in Rangoon.
History
It was decided that the area of Southern
Burma , then part of theBritish Indian Empire required a more substantial ecclesiastical presence than theBishop of Calcutta could provide. For decades the Americanbaptist missionaries and members of theSociety for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts had been making inroads among theBurmese andKarenni peoples, and therefore in 1877 the diocese of Rangoon, subject to the diocese of Calcutta was established byLetters Patent .Jonathan Holt Titcomb , a parish priest in thediocese of Winchester which had contributed a large sum of money to setting up the diocese, was elected the first Bishop of Rangoon and so appointed on17 December ,1877 .The Bishop was formerly appointed by the
monarch on the advice of theSecretary of State for India , as part of theChurch of England inIndian Empire andCeylon . However, in 1927 in response to growing agitation on the part of the bishops in India theBritish Parliament passed legislation to bring to an end the Church of England's jurisdiction over the church in India. Consequently the Diocese of Rangoon became a major part of the new, autonomous Church of India, Burma and Ceylon. In Burma, the Bishop was permitted to title himself as head of the Church of Burma.The Bishop continued to assume his duties in Burma after the independence of that country in 1948. However in 1966 the Burmese government forced all Western missionaries to leave, including the then Bishop V.G. Shearburn. His assistant bishop, Francis Ah Mya was appointed Bishop in his place. In 1970 the Church of Burma, hitherto part of the Church of India, Pakistan, Burma and Ceylon (the then-current incarnation of the 1927 creation) became the Anglican Church of the Province of Burma, and the Bishopric of Rangoon was elevated to
Archbishop .Bishops
See
List of bishops of Rangoon .Citations
Reference list
*
*
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.