Ancient British Church

The Ancient British Church was a British religious movement founded by Jules Ferrette (Mar Julius) and Richard Williams Morgan (Mar Pelagius).

The Ancient British Church was founded circa 1874 as a restoration of the Christian church of the first millennium in the British Isles.

The leader of the Ancient British Church was styled as "British Patriarch".

Although the name Ancient British Church is no longer used, a number of present-day bodies may be said to have derived (or partly derived) from the Ancient British Church, for example the British Orthodox Church, the Celtic Orthodox Church, the Evangelical Apostolic Church of North America (Syro-Chaldean), and the Ancient British Church in North America. The Free Protestant Episcopal Church (which in 2012 adopted the name Anglican Free Communion) was merged or very closely linked with the Ancient British Church from 1897 until 1939 and from 1900 to 1939 leadership of these two bodies coincided in the same sequence of individuals.

Morgan was given the full title Mar Pelagius I, Hierarch of Caerleon-on-Usk by Ferrette in Oxfordshire in 1858. Mar Julius is said to have conditionally "baptised, confirmed, ordained and consecrated" Pelagius the first Patriarch of the Church.

Morgan and Ferrette planned the movement as an attempt to restore a form of Christianity in Britain that they called Neo-Celtic Christianity. They claimed that it existed in a syncretistic, druidic form prior to the entry of Augustine of Canterbury and the Synod of Whitby. Morgan hoped to establish a "tradition in Britain as part of a world-wide Orthodox Movement which would eventually lead to the reunion of Christendom".

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