Evangelical Presbyterian Church (United States)
| Evangelical Presbyterian Church (United States) | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Classification | Protestant |
| Orientation | Reformed Evangelical |
| Polity | Presbyterian |
| Associations | World Communion of Reformed Churches, World Reformed Fellowship |
| Headquarters | Orlando, Florida |
| Origin | 1981 |
| Separated from | United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (UPCUSA) later the PC(USA) |
| Congregations | more than 600 (as of March 2017) |
| Members | ca. 171,000 |
| Official website | www |
The Evangelical Presbyterian Church (EPC) is an American church body holding to presbyterian governance and Reformed theology, expressed in an orthodox, conservative vein. The motto of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church is "In Essentials, Unity. In Non-Essentials, Liberty. In All Things, Charity; Truth In Love." The Office of the General Assembly is in Orlando, Florida.
The EPC began as a result of prayer meetings in 1980 and 1981 by pastors and elders increasingly alienated by liberalism in the "northern" branch of Presbyterianism (the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., a predecessor of the Presbyterian Church USA). Two cases served as important catalysts in their separation: the Kenyon Case of 1975 and the Kaseman Case of 1981. Winn Kenyon was a seminary graduate who in good conscience declared that he would refuse to participate in the ordination of a woman, although he affirmed that he would willingly serve in a pastorate with ordained women on the staff. Though he had been ordained by the Pittsburgh Presbytery, in 1975 the Permanent Judicial Commission of the UPCUSA General Assembly overturned Kenyon's ordination because accepting women's ordination was "an explicit constitutional provision." Six years later, a Maryland presbytery received Mansfield Kaseman, a United Church of Christ minister who denied the divinity of Jesus, into its membership.
The first general assembly of the church met at Ward Evangelical Presbyterian Church in suburban Detroit, Michigan in late 1981, drafting a list of essential beliefs. This list was intentionally short in order to help preserve the unity of the church around the essentials of the faith in theology, church government, and evangelism.
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