Evangelical Catholic - Among Other Church Bodies

Among Other Church Bodies

In recent years, the term Evangelical Catholic, has been adopted by high church elements of the Methodist and Reformed Churches. This is especially apt among the Reformed, given that one of the older documented uses of the term is by John Williamson Nevin and Philip Schaff, during their efforts (from roughly 1841 forward) to repristinate the theology of the German Reformed Church in the United States. In 1849 the Mercersburg Review was founded as the organ of their "Mercersburg Theology".

Beginning in 1851, William Augustus Mühlenberg, the Protestant Episcopal clergyman of Lutheran background, and father of the Ritualist movement in the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, also published a periodical called "The Evangelical Catholic."

Already earlier, there was an evangelical revival in the Roman Catholic Church in Germany, involving Boos, Gossner and Feneberg. This evangelical revivalist movement also spread to German Lutheranism.

The Lusitanian Catholic Apostolic Evangelical Church in Portugal has its origins in the Old Catholic movement of the 19th century. Today it belongs to the Anglican Communion.

In England, Ulric Vernon Herford (1866–1938), Mar Jacobus, Bishop of Mercia & Middelesex, founded The Evangelical Catholic Communion. His succession line was brought to the United States in the 1960s and continues in Evangelical Apostolic Church of North America.

Some members of various Christian denominations may use the term Evangelical Catholic to indicate the fact that they are evangelical and maintain their catholicity. For example, Methodists and Presbyterians believe their denominations owe their origins to the Apostles and the early church, but do not claim descent from ancient church structures such as the episcopate. However, both of these churches hold that they are a part of the catholic (universal) church. According to Harper's New Monthly Magazine:

The various Protestant sects can not constitute one church because they have no intercommunion...each Protestant Church, whether Methodist or Baptist or whatever, is in perfect communion with itself everywhere as the Roman Catholic; and in this respect, consequently, the Roman Catholic has no advantage or superiority, except in the point of numbers. As a further necessary consequence, it is plain that the Roman Church is no more Catholic in any sense than a Methodist or a Baptist. —Henry Mills Alden, Harper's New Monthly Magazine Volume 37, Issues 217-222

As such, according to one viewpoint, for those who "belong to the Church," the term Methodist Catholic, or Presbyterian Catholic, or Baptist Catholic, is as proper as the term Roman Catholic. It simply means that body of Christian believers over the world who agree in their religious views, and accept the same ecclesiastical forms.