The Evangelical Presbyterian Church (EPC, ga, Eaglais Phreispitéireach Soiscéalaí) is a

Calvinist Calvinism (also called the Reformed Tradition, Reformed Protestantism, Reformed Christianity, or simply Reformed) is a major branch of Protestantism that follows the theological tradition and forms of Christian practice set down by John Ca ...

, Christian evangelical denomination that is found only in

Northern Ireland Northern Ireland ( ga, Tuaisceart Éireann ; sco, label= Ulster-Scots, Norlin Airlann) is a part of the United Kingdom, situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, that is variously described as a country, province or region. Nort ...

, where it is the smallest of the

Presbyterian Presbyterianism is a part of the Reformed tradition within Protestantism that broke from the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland by John Knox, who was a priest at St. Giles Cathedral (Church of Scotland). Presbyterian churches derive their nam ...

churches. It was formed on 15 October 1927 (as the Irish Evangelical Church 'Eaglais Soisgealach na hÉireann'' by Rev. James Hunter (18631942), former minister of Knock Presbyterian Church (Belfast), and James (W.J.) Grier, a former student at the

Assembly's College ''This page is about a college in Northern Ireland. For institutions with similar names, see Union Theological Seminary and Union School of Theology'' , mottoeng = ''“Buy the truth and sell it not”'' (taken from Proverbs 23:23) , establi ...

(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 Presbyterian Church in Ireland (PCI; ga, Eaglais Phreispitéireach in Éirinn; Ulster-Scots: ''Prisbytairin Kirk in Airlann'') is the largest Presbyterian denomination in the Republic of Ireland, and the largest Protestant denomination in ...

).''The Evangelical Presbyterian''
magazine of the EPC, March–April 2011

History

Evolution of Presbyterian churches in Ireland 2

The breakaway was prompted by the acquittal in a Presbytery trial of Professor

James E. Davey James Ernest Davey (1890–1960) was a Northern Irish Presbyterian minister, historian and theologian who was acquitted on charges of heresy in 1927 and elected Moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland in 1953. Educ ...

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 Princeton Theological Seminary (PTSem), officially The Theological Seminary of the Presbyterian Church, is a private school of theology in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1812 under the auspices of Archibald Alexander, the General Assembly of t ...

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 County Antrim (named after the town of Antrim, ) is one of six counties of Northern Ireland and one of the thirty-two counties of Ireland. Adjoined to the north-east shore of Lough Neagh, the county covers an area of and has a population o ...

and two in

County Tyrone County Tyrone (; ) is one of the six counties of Northern Ireland, one of the nine counties of Ulster and one of the thirty-two traditional counties of Ireland. It is no longer used as an administrative division for local government but retai ...

. 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 Richhill is a large village and townland in County Armagh, Northern Ireland. It lies between Armagh and Portadown. It had a population of 2,821 people in the 2011 Census. Originally named Legacorry, it takes its name from Edward Richardson, who ...

and one in

Omagh Omagh (; from ga, An Ómaigh , meaning 'the virgin plain') is the county town of County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. It is situated where the rivers Drumragh and Camowen meet to form the Strule. Northern Ireland's capital city Belfast is 68 m ...

, County Tyrone. The church's monthly magazine, ''The Irish Evangelical'', was first issued in June 1928. Grier remained its editor for 50 years. With the change of the church's name in 1964, the magazine becam
''The Evangelical Presbyterian''
and now appears every three months. The Evangelical Presbyterian Church is among a number of small evangelical denominations represented in a

creationist Creationism is the religious belief that nature, and aspects such as the universe, Earth, life, and humans, originated with supernatural acts of divine creation. Gunn 2004, p. 9, "The ''Concise Oxford Dictionary'' says that creationism is 'th ...

and socially conservative pressure group, the Caleb Foundation.Caleb Foundation
website EPC member Wallace Thompson, who had been the Foundation's treasurer since 1998, succeeded as chairman of the Foundation in September 2009. The EPC in 2010 opposed a

Bill of Rights A bill of rights, sometimes called a declaration of rights or a charter of rights, is a list of the most important rights to the citizens of a country. The purpose is to protect those rights against infringement from public officials and pr ...

for Northern Ireland on the grounds that the

Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission The Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission (NIHRC) is a non-departmental public body funded through the Northern Ireland Office but operating independently of government as the National human rights institutions, national human rights institutio ...

's proposal was "driven by those who are opposed to Biblical Christianity" and "is a further departure from the solid foundation of the Word of God". In 2011–12 the EPC Public Morals Committee supported a campaign by the

Christian Institute The Christian Institute (CI) is a pressure group operating in the United Kingdom, promoting a fundamentalist Christian viewpoint, founded on a belief in Biblical inerrancy. The CI is a registered charity. The group does not report numbers of sta ...

, an evangelical pressure group, against funding of the London Pride festival by

Tesco Tesco plc () is a British multinational groceries and general merchandise retailer headquartered in Welwyn Garden City, England. In 2011 it was the third-largest retailer in the world measured by gross revenues and the ninth-largest in th ...

International links

The church allied from its early days with the Free Church of Scotland and has co-operated with it in missionary work, focussing since 1932 on India, South Africa and Peru. Also from 1987 an EPC minister has served in Nigeria.''The Evangelical Presbyterian''
January–February 2012, p.10-11 The church has connections to other mission agencies through the involvement of some of its members and former members, e.g.
AIM
(Uganda and Chad),

Mission Africa Mission Africa (formerly known as the Qua Iboe Mission and subsequently the Qua Iboe Fellowship) is an interdenominational, evangelical, Christian mission organisation. When founded in 1887, by the Irish independent missionary Samuel Bill, the ...

(Nigeria), an
Africa Christian TextbookS
(ACTS), a non-profit publisher supplying affordable books to African pastors, founded by EPC minister Rev. Sid Garland. Formerly a member of the

Reformed Ecumenical Council The Reformed Ecumenical Council (REC) was an international organization of Calvinism churches. It had 39 member denominations from 25 countries in its membership, and those churches have about 12 million people together. It was founded August 14, 1 ...

(REC), the EPC was among a group of conservative churches that broke away from the REC over its refusal to expel the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands (Synodal) (GKN-s, nl, Gereformeerde Kerken in Nederland-synodaal) for deciding in 1979 to allow the ordination of non-celibate gay people. It then joined the

International Conference of Reformed Churches The International Conference of Reformed Churches (ICRC) is a federation of Reformed or Calvinist churches around the world. The ICRC was founded in 1981. The ICRC convenes international meetings every four years. Its theology is more conservative ...

Links to churches in UK and Ireland

The EPC has played a part in the development of, and continues in close fellowship with, the Evangelical Presbyterian Church of England and Wales. Relations with other evangelical churches in the UK and Ireland are conducted through membership o
Affinity

Doctrine

In developing its theological subordinate standards, the new church at first adopted eight Articles of Faith based on the

Westminster Standards The Westminster Standards is a collective name for the documents drawn up by the Westminster Assembly (1643–49). These include the Westminster Confession of Faith, the Westminster Shorter Catechism, the Westminster Larger Catechism, the Directo ...

(1646–49). However, after differences arose within the church over the theology of

dispensationalism Dispensationalism is a system that was formalized in its entirety by John Nelson Darby. Dispensationalism maintains that history is divided into multiple ages or "dispensations" in which God acts with humanity in different ways. Dispensationali ...

, the church from 1928 has required all its officers to pledge their support to the Westminster Catechisms and, subsequently, the

Westminster Confession of Faith The Westminster Confession of Faith is a Reformed confession of faith. Drawn up by the 1646 Westminster Assembly as part of the Westminster Standards to be a confession of the Church of England, it became and remains the "subordinate standard" ...

, "without any reservations". Thus, the church upholds the doctrines of the

Trinity The Christian doctrine of the Trinity (, from 'threefold') is the central dogma concerning the nature of God in most Christian churches, which defines one God existing in three coequal, coeternal, consubstantial divine persons: God th ...

Jesus Jesus, likely from he, יֵשׁוּעַ, translit=Yēšūaʿ, label= Hebrew/ Aramaic ( AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ or Jesus of Nazareth (among other names and titles), was a first-century Jewish preacher and religiou ...

' sacrificial death and

resurrection Resurrection or anastasis is the concept of coming back to life after death. In a number of religions, a dying-and-rising god is a deity which dies and is resurrected. Reincarnation is a similar process hypothesized by other religions, whic ...

, ''

sola scriptura , meaning by scripture alone, is a Christian theological doctrine held by most Protestant Christian denominations, in particular the Lutheran and Reformed traditions of Protestantism, that posits the Bible as the sole infallible source of aut ...

'', ''

sola fide ''Justificatio sola fide'' (or simply ''sola fide''), meaning justification by faith alone, is a soteriological doctrine in Christian theology commonly held to distinguish the Lutheran and Reformed traditions of Protestantism, among others, fr ...

'', double

predestination Predestination, in theology, is the doctrine that all events have been willed by God, usually with reference to the eventual fate of the individual soul. Explanations of predestination often seek to address the paradox of free will, whereby G ...

(alongside freedom of choice), the covenant of works with Adam, that assurance of salvation is not a necessary consequence of faith, a

regulative principle of worship The regulative principle of worship is a Christian doctrine, held by some Calvinists and Anabaptists, that God commands churches to conduct public services of worship using certain distinct elements affirmatively found in scripture, and conversely ...

, strict

sabbatarianism Sabbatarianism advocates the observation of the Sabbath in Christianity, in keeping with the Ten Commandments. The observance of Sunday as a day of worship and rest is a form of first-day Sabbatarianism, a view which was historically heralded ...

, and that the Roman Catholic doctrine of

Transubstantiation Transubstantiation (Latin: ''transubstantiatio''; Greek: μετουσίωσις '' metousiosis'') is, according to the teaching of the Catholic Church, "the change of the whole substance of bread into the substance of the Body of Christ and of ...

in the

Mass Mass is an intrinsic property of a body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the quantity of matter in a physical body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physics. It was found that different atoms and different eleme ...

is unscriptural and can be a cause of superstition or idolatry. In common with some other Reformed churches, the EPC in its Code has amended three clauses in the Confession, namely, those concerning the

Antichrist In Christian eschatology, the Antichrist refers to people prophesied by the Bible to oppose Jesus Christ and substitute themselves in Christ's place before the Second Coming. The term Antichrist (including one plural form)1 John ; . 2 John . ...

consanguinity Consanguinity ("blood relation", from Latin '' consanguinitas'') is the characteristic of having a kinship with another person (being descended from a common ancestor). Many jurisdictions have laws prohibiting people who are related by blood fr ...

, and the civil magistrate.

Politics

The EPC encourages its members to exercise their right to vote in elections, and to apply Biblical principles to their choices. It does not have links to any political parties.

Church meetings

All EPC churches normally hold two services on Sundays, and a midweek meeting for prayer and Bible study. Additional meetings vary from one congregation to another, but include Sunday Schools, youth clubs, ladies’ meetings, Parent & Toddler groups, addiction support, children’s meetings and summer clubs for children and young people.

Conferences

The EPC holds an annual Presbytery Day Conference/Family Day in April or May, when the congregations meet together and hear a visiting speaker, with crèche facilities, a bookstall laid on by th
Evangelical Bookshop
refreshments and lunch. Recent speakers have include
Achille Blaize

Geoff Thomas Geoff or Geoffrey Thomas may refer to: * Geoffrey Thomas (academic) (born 1941), president of Kellogg College, Oxford * Geoffrey Thomas (businessman) (born 1959), Australian businessman * Geoff Thomas (footballer, born 1948) (1948–2013), Welsh fo ...

Edward Donnelly
and Derek Thomas.

Bookshop

The EPC is closely linked to the Evangelical Book Shop, a separate charity, at 15 College Square East, Belfast, and online at http://www.evangelicalbookshop.co.uk. In 2016 the Bookshop published a history of the EPC by Ernest C. Brown, entitled By Honour and Dishonour.

Other Presbyterian churches in Ireland

* Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster * Non-subscribing Presbyterian Church of Ireland *

Reformed Presbyterian Church of Ireland The Reformed Presbyterian Church of Ireland is a Presbyterian church in Ireland. The church currently has forty-three congregations, of which thirty-five are located in Northern Ireland; the remaining eight are located in the Republic of Ireland. A ...

References

External links

Official websiteStranmillis EPC - About us
{{Authority control Presbyterian churches in Northern Ireland Presbyterian denominations in Europe Christian organizations established in 1927 Presbyterian denominations established in the 20th century