Evangelical Church of Romania
| Evangelical Church of Romania | |
|---|---|
| Classification | Protestant (with Eastern Orthodox roots) |
| Orientation | Plymouth Brethren and Eastern Orthodox |
| Polity | Congregationalist |
| Region | Romania |
| Founder | Tudor Popescu |
| Origin | 1920s; refounded 1989 |
| Separated from | Romanian Orthodox Church (1920s), Christian Evangelical Church of Romania (1989) |
| Merger of | Christian Evangelical Church of Romania (1939) |
| Congregations | approx. 220 (in 2008) |
| Members | 15,514 (in 2011) |
The Evangelical Church of Romania (Romanian: Biserica Evanghelică Română), a Protestant denomination, is one of Romania's eighteen officially recognised religious denominations.
The church originated between 1920 and 1924, the work of the young Romanian Orthodox theologians Dumitru Cornilescu (whose Bible translation is used by neo-Protestant churches in Romania) and Tudor Popescu (a former priest at the Cuibul cu barză Church). Also known as Tudorites, the deeply pietistic movement, regarded as the only neo-Protestant church with Romanian origins, originated in a profound religious experience of Popescu's. Following this, he began to preach repentance and faith, questioning the significance attached by Orthodoxy to the saints, icons and the sacraments, and emphasising the centrality of the Bible instead of the liturgy. Eventually excommunicated and barred from addressing Orthodox congregations, he was lent an auditorium by an affiliate of the Anglican Mission to the Jews in Bucharest. Much to the consternation of his former church, he was able to firmly establish his work, drawing large crowds with his very popular preaching.
Under the leadership of Popescu and Cornilescu, several hundred followers built a 1000-seat mother church in 1926, which still drew close to eight hundred worshipers on an average Sunday morning in the early 1990s. At the request of government authorities, some of whom Popescu deeply impressed, the new movement registered as an association in 1927 and, in order to be distinguished from other groups, took the name Christians of the Scriptures. Shortly thereafter, churches opened in Ploieşti, Câmpulung, Târgovişte, Rucăr, Buzău, Piteşti, Bârlad, Braşov and other places.
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