Evangelical Presbyterian Church

Heritage

The Evangelical Presbyterian Church was founded in 1981 by congregations seeking a home that was confessionally Reformed, warmly evangelical, and deliberately roomy on secondary questions. Its charter documents pair the Westminster Confession with a short list of Essentials of Our Faith, under the motto "In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity." The church roughly tripled between 2007 and 2012 as congregations departed the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), many arriving through a purpose-built New Wineskins transitional presbytery. RCMS 2020 counted 625 US congregations.

Theological family

Evangelical Reformed: the Westminster Standards held with a defined distinction between essential doctrines and matters of liberty; Scripture is confessed as the inspired, infallible Word. The EPC is charismatic-tolerant — openness to the gifts of the Spirit is an allowed position, unusual among confessional Presbyterian bodies.

Who decides what

Presbyterian — sessions, presbyteries, General Assembly — with its signature liberty provision: the ordination of women as ministers and elders is a matter each presbytery and congregation decides, so egalitarian and complementarian churches share the same courts by design. Congregations own their property.

What a first-time visitor would find

Worship spans traditional Reformed liturgy to contemporary services, reflecting both the church's liberty principle and the varied congregations that joined it; preaching is substantive and evangelical, and a visitor should expect the local congregation's own style rather than a denominational one.

What it has always cared about

The essentials-liberty distinction practiced, not just quoted; world missions, with a long emphasis on unreached peoples; church revitalization for congregations arriving from transitions; and charity across internal difference as a discipline.

Its gift to the wider church

The EPC has given American Presbyterianism a working model of principled breadth — proof that a confessional church can write its tolerances into its constitution and hold together, which made it a refuge in two generations of Presbyterian realignment.

Commonly confused with

With ECO, the other main home for former PC(USA) evangelicals — ECO affirms women's ordination outright while the EPC leaves it to local liberty; and with the PCA, which shares the Westminster Standards but binds more questions as essentials, including male-only ordination. Each body would recognize itself in this description.

Range of views inside it

By design: congregations differ on women's ordination, worship style, and charismatic practice, all within the shared essentials; the range is the polity working as intended.

Where Evangelical Presbyterian Church churches are on the map

11 Evangelical Presbyterian Church congregations appear on The Church Map, across 7 states.

• New York — 2
• Ohio — 2
• Pennsylvania — 2
• Virginia — 2
• Kansas — 1
• Michigan — 1
• Mississippi — 1

Moments this body was part of

• 2012 — ECO and the Presbyterian realignment

  Out of the Fellowship of Presbyterians, congregations departing the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) over theology and sexuality formed ECO: A Covenant Order of Evangelical Presbyterians in 2012 at Orlando, while others transferred to the Evangelical Presbyterian Church. Several hundred congregations were dismissed through the 2010s, most under negotiated "gracious dismissal" policies rather than through the courts.

  Many presbyteries and departing congregations chose negotiated dismissal over litigation — parting as an agreement rather than a lawsuit, which earlier centuries rarely managed.