Christian Evangelical Church of Romania
| Christian Evangelical Church of Romania | |
|---|---|
| Classification | Protestant |
| Orientation | Plymouth Brethren |
| Polity | Congregationalist |
| Region | Romania |
| Origin | 1899 |
| Merger of | Evangelical Church of Romania (1939) |
| Separations | Evangelical Church of Romania (1989) |
| Congregations | 678 |
| Members | 42,495 (in 2011) |
| Ministers | 724 |
The Christian Evangelical Church of Romania (Romanian: Biserica Creştină după Evanghelie) is a Plymouth Brethren Protestant denomination, one of Romania's eighteen officially recognised religious denominations.
Under the influence of foreign Plymouth Brethren missionaries active in Romania in the late 19th century, a group of "free Christians" was founded in Bucharest in 1899. Initially, members were foreign residents of the capital city; they were later joined by Romanian converts. Also known as "Darbyites" after John Nelson Darby, the British 19th century founder of their movement, the group was outlawed in the 1920s and was accused of spreading communist ideas. In 1933, the Romanian state recognised them as a religious association, the Christian Evangelicals. In 1939, they were compelled by the National Renaissance Front regime to merge with the Christians of the Scriptures or Tudorites. The Christian Evangelical Church was thus formed, with two branches: branch I, which practised believer's baptism, and branch II, which employed infant baptism. (The difference stemmed from the tradition whence each emerged: Plymouth Brethren and Romanian Orthodox, respectively.)
Banned under the World War II-era regime of Ion Antonescu, in 1946, the Evangelical Christians were recognised as a religious body by the Romanian state, having once again merged with the Tudorites and a splinter group called "Christians" centred at Ploieşti. In 1950, soon after the advent of the Communist regime, the Christian Evangelicals had 600 churches; a large number of smaller ones were officially closed following a state ruling that they must have at least twenty members, but many of them probably continued to meet quietly. In the late 1970s, the group claimed to have nearly 400 churches, a number of which awaited official registration, and around 55,000 members. A number of scholars suggest a figure of 120,000, but this is likely based on Tudorite support within the Orthodox Church and also includes a considerable number who had not formally transferred their membership and thus were not listed as members. By the 1980s, there was a full-time secretary and a three-member executive committee in Bucharest, although there was a great deal of ambiguity regarding the committee's authority. The church, like its neo-Protestant counterparts, received no state aid, supporting itself entirely from member contributions. Members also had social concerns, supporting a ninety-member leprosy community. Doctrinally, the church was closest to the Baptists, with whom it shared a pension programme. It had relationships with Brethren churches in California, Canada, Czechoslovakia, England, Germany, Hungary and Switzerland. In a display of support for their colleagues, representatives from these foreign communities attended the peace conferences allegedly sponsored by the Romanian religious communities in the 1980s.
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