Evangelical Presbyterian Church (Ireland)

Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Ireland
Classification	Protestant
Orientation	Calvinist
Polity	Presbyterian
Region	Northern Ireland
Founder	James Hunter, W.J. Grier
Origin	15 October 1927 Belfast
Separated from	Irish Presbyterian Church
Congregations	10
Members	508 (Average attendance)
Ministers	10
Missionaries	<10
Official website	www.epcni.org.uk

The Evangelical Presbyterian Church (EPC) is a Calvinist, Christian evangelical denomination that is found only in Northern Ireland, where it is the smallest of the Presbyterian churches. It was formed on 15 October 1927 (as the Irish Evangelical Church) by Rev. James Hunter (1863–1942), former minister of Knock Presbyterian Church (Belfast), and James (W.J.) Grier, a former student at the Assembly's College (the Presbyterian theological college in Belfast). They were joined by others who seceded from the Irish Presbyterian Church (now called the Presbyterian Church in Ireland).

The breakaway was prompted by the acquittal in a Presbytery trial of Professor James E. Davey of the Assembly's College on charges brought by Hunter and others of five counts of heresy. Davey's accusers, who had campaigned against him and against what they termed "modernism" through a Presbyterian Bible Standards League, were influenced by the conservative Reformed theology of the US Presbyterian scholar John Gresham Machen, who had taught Grier in Princeton Theological Seminary and visited Ireland in 1927. A month after the Presbyterian General Assembly upheld the trial verdict by 707 votes to 82, the anti-Davey group seceded.

Soon after the Irish Evangelical Church was constituted in October 1927, it had six congregations in Belfast, two in County Antrim and two in County Tyrone. It adopted its present name in 1964. In 2013 the EPC had nine congregations, all in Counties Antrim and Down apart from one in Richhill, County Armagh and one in Omagh, County Tyrone.

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