The Reverend is a style most often used as a prefix to the names of Christian clergy and ministers. There are sometimes differences in the way the style is used in different countries and church traditions. The Reverend is correctly called a style but is often and in some dictionaries called a title, form of address or title of respect. The style is also sometimes used by leaders in non-Christian religions such as Judaism and Buddhism.^{[citation needed]}

The term is an anglicisation of the Latin reverendus, the style originally used in Latin documents by the Roman Catholic Church. It is the gerundive of the verb revereri (to respect) which may be taken as a gerundive or a passive periphrastic, therefore meaning [one who is] to be respected/must be respected. The Reverend is therefore equivalent to The Hono(u)rable or The Venerable.^{[citation needed]}

It is paired with a modifier or noun for some offices in some religious traditions: e.g., Roman Catholic bishops are usually styled The Most Reverend (reverendissimus); Anglican bishops are styled The Right Reverend; some Reformed churches have used The Reverend Mister as a style for their clergy.

The Bishop of Oxford is the diocesan bishop of the Church of England Diocese of Oxford in the Province of Canterbury; his seat is at Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford. The present incumbent, the 42nd, is John Lawrence Pritchard, who ceremonially began his work on 8 June 2007.

The origins of Christianity in this part of England go back at least to the 7th century, when Saint Birinus brought his mission to the West Saxons in 634. The West Saxon King Cynegils was baptised in the River Thames near the present site of Dorchester Abbey, where the original See was established.

The see was transferred in 1092 to Winchester, before being absorbed into the Diocese of Lincoln, the vast extent of which covered much of central and eastern England from the River Thames to the Humber.

King Henry VIII, acting now as head of the Church in England, established by Act of Parliament in 1542 six new dioceses, mostly out of the spoils of the suppressed monasteries. These six were Bristol, Chester, Gloucester, Oxford, Peterborough and Westminster. This intervention by Henry VIII saw a new see located at Osney in Oxfordshire in 1542 before finally being moved to its present location in the City of Oxford in 1546.