“Beginnings”
As most church historians know, the first group of episcopal governed Anglicans to separate from the Church of England were the Non-jurors who existed from 1689 to 1805 when the last of their bishops died without a successor. These devout people initially left the mother church over maintaining their allegiance to the Royal House of Stuart after the Glorious Revolution of 1688. They were traditional High Churchmen, but over time, they became interested in the Eastern Orthodox Churches and adopted several practices of those churches. Indeed, towards the end of the Non-juror’s existence, they had started to refer to themselves as ‘the remnant of the Ancient British Church’ or ‘the Orthodox British Church.’
On 6 June 1866, a former French Roman Catholic missionary priest, Raymond Ferrette (1828 to 1904), was consecrated a bishop, with the religious name of ‘Mar Julius’, under the authority of the Syrian Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch and was sent to England to initiate an indigenous and autonomous Orthodox Church as a step towards reunion between western and eastern Christians. On 6 March 1874 at Marholm, Northants, England, he consecrated the Rev’d Richard Williams Morgan (1815 to 1899), a clergyman in the Church of England, as the native British bishop in this plan. Bishop Morgan, taking the religious name of ‘Mar Pelagius I,’ re-established the Ancient British Church while continuing his duties as an Anglican clergyman and as a historian of note. Exactly five years later, on 6 March 1879, he consecrated his successor as head of this church, the Rev Charles Isaac Stevens (1835 to 1917), a former presbyter of the Reformed Episcopal Church of the UK. Bishop Stevens took the religious name of ‘Mar Theophilus I.’ Interestingly, Bishop Stevens’ co-consecrators were bishops in the Order of Corporate Reunion – a body of independent clergy who wanted the Church of England to reunite with the Roman Catholic Church! One co-consecrator was Dr. Frederick George Lee, a descendant of the Non-juroring bishop Dr. Timothy Newmarsh, who had been consecrated in 1726. This Ancient British Church was to revive the high church and liturgical principles of the former Non-jurors in opposition to the Anglo-Catholicism that was sparked within the Church of England by the beginnings of the Oxford Movement in 1833.
Meantime, in 1888, the Rev founded the Nazarene Episcopal Church. James Martin (1843 to 1919) established his headquarters at Flaxman Road, Loughborough Junction, London, S.E.5. On 11 April 1888, it received episcopal succession when Bishop Alfred Spencer Richardson of the Reformed Episcopal Church of the UK consecrated Dr. Martin. In 1890, Bishop Martin founded Nazarene College to serve as the seminary of his jurisdiction.
In 1885, while he served as a priest for the Armenian Catholic Church community – a church body in union with the Roman Catholic Church – in Constantinople (from 1881 to 1885), Bishop Leon Checkemian (1848 to 1920) through contacts with Anglicans, converted to Reform Protestantism and resolved to emigrate to England. Dr. Checkemian had earlier served as an assistant bishop (from 1878 to 1881) for his ethnic group in Malatia (his birthplace), Asia Minor, having received consecration on 23 April 1878 from Armenian Catholic Archbishop Leon Korkorunian (1822 to 1897). As a newcomer, he first found work as a common laborer to survive and studied at New College, a Presbyterian seminary. By 1889, his command of English was such that he obtained employment in Belfast, Ireland, through the Presbyterian Church and became a noted lecturer and preacher in the Protestant churches in that city. Dr. Checkemian established the United Armenian Catholic Church in the British Isles on August 15, 1889 to bring his fellow British Armenian refugees into a non-papal church.
The following year, Dr. Checkemian created the Free Protestant Church of England as a common meeting place for all Protestant Christians – Anglicans, Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists, etc. On 4 May 1890, he received consecration from the Bishops mentioned above Charles Isaac Stevens and Alfred Spencer Richardson to remove any doubts about his episcopal status.
Dr. Checkemian came to the attention of the Most Rev’d and the Rt. Honorable Dr. William C. Plunket (1828 to 1897) was the fourth Baron Plunket, Archbishop of Dublin and Primate of the Church of Ireland. Archbishop Plunket hated the creeping Anglo-Catholicism within the Anglican Communion, which he viewed as a trojan horse for Papal re-establishment over the Church of England. He dreamt of it as a countermeasure to establishing Reformed Episcopal churches in spheres of Roman Catholic influence. He saw Dr. Checkemian’s idea of the United Armenian Catholic Church as part of the above plan. He endorsed it by giving Dr. Checkemian a license to officiate as a clergyman within the Church of Ireland. Lord Plunket hoped this church would eventually be established within the Armenian homeland to replace the Armenian Uniate Church. In 1894, he helped establish the Spanish Reformed Episcopal Church by consecrating its founder, a former Roman Catholic priest, the Rev Juan Bautista Cabrera (1837 to 1916), as its first bishop. Unfortunately, on 1 April 1897, Lord Plunket died before he could help Dr. Checkemian expand the United Armenian Catholic Church back to Turkey.
In the meantime, Bishop Checkemian moved to London, where he was in close contact with the above-mentioned independent bishops. They realized they could be a better witness for evangelical Anglicanism if they could merge their resources as one church body. On 2 November 1897, the Free Protestant Episcopal Church of England was formed with the union of the Free Protestant Church, the Ancient British Church, and the Nazarene Episcopal Church, with Dr. Checkemian as its first Primus. Dr. Checkemian retained the headship of the United Armenian Catholic Church as a separate organization from this union. The FPEC was inaugurated on the above date in St. Stephen’s Church, East Ham, London, when Dr. Checkemian, Dr. Stevens, and Dr. James Martin first consecrated George W.L. Maeers (for the Spanish Reformed Episcopal Church) and Frederick W. Boucher to the episcopal bench. These five bishops, in turn, then consecrated Andrew Charles Albert McLaglen (1851 to 1928). The 1878 Constitution and Canons of the Reformed Episcopal Church of the UK was adopted for use in the new FPEC.
In December 1900, Dr. Checkemian retired as Primus of the FPEC and Archbishop of the United Armenian Catholic Church and was succeeded by Dr. Stevens as head of both church bodies. On 2 February 1917, Dr. Stevens died, and Dr. Martin became the third head of the Church. Two years later, on 20 October 1919, Dr. Martin died and was succeeded as Primus by Dr. McLaglen. On 3 December 1920, Dr. Checkemian died.
The high point of the FPEC was when it obtained recognition from the British Government as a legally constituted denomination. This fact was established in early 1917 when the Venerable Ernest Albert Asquith, Ph.D. (1884 to 1942), 26 Speldhurst Rd., London, the Archdeacon of the Church, was a test case under the Military Service Act of 1916. Clergymen could obtain an exemption from military service under the terms of this Act. The officiating magistrate gave his decision that the Ven. Dr. Asquith was a lawfully ordained minister of a legally constituted Episcopal Church and, therefore, a man in Holy Orders within the meaning of the Act. His Worship arrived at this conclusion after investigating the origin of the Orders of the Church and the services used for ordinations and consecrations, which are based on the 1662 Book of Common Prayer.
In early 1922, Primus McLaglen appointed his successors as the head of the Free Protestant Episcopal Church, the Ancient British Church, and the United Armenian Catholic Church. On 4 June 1922, in St. Andrew’s Church, Retreat Place, London, he consecrated Francis George Widdows (1850 to 1936) and Herbert James Monzani Heard (1866 to 1947) to the episcopate. Bishop Widdows, a former Roman Catholic Franciscan monk, 1886 had become a non-conformist minister at the Church of Martin Luther congregation at 26 Speldhurst Road, South Hackney. In 1909, this church became affiliated with the FPEC. +Widdows was given the title of Ignatius, Bishop of Hackney, and was to become the new Primus of the FPEC at a later date. Bishop Monzani Heard, the then headmaster of Raleigh College in Brixton, South London, was immediately made the head of the Ancient British and United Armenian Catholic churches. By that time, these three jurisdictions were “paper churches” as there were no formal congregations for any of them; however, the FPEC had canons to organize parishes (the hope) and to allow for independent congregations to be under its bishop’s oversight (the reality). +Widdows had a chequered history of being in prison on morals charges (he was a known homosexual in an age when it was illegal in the UK to be so) and, on the other hand, ministering for many years to his highly loyal congregation. Primus McLaglen had second thoughts about him being his successor as head of the FPEC and, within the year, had him removed from that succession and had any mention of +Widdows stricken from the official records of the Church. There is some dispute that +Widdows was ever consecrated, but the oral tradition amongst later FPEC bishops and other historians’ writings state that it was so. FPEC clergy, rather than having explicit FPEC parishes, served as nonconformist ministers in different denominations and public institutions such as hospitals, jails, and college chapels.
1922 to 2011
On 16 October 1928, Dr. McLaglen died, and the office of Primus went to Dr. Monzani Heard, who began his episcopal functions in April 1930 after he retired from his teaching profession. On 18 May 1939, he retired as the Primus of the FPEC when he consecrated as his successor Dr. William Hall (1890 to 1959), long-time chaplain to Abney Park Cemetery, Stoke Newington, Stamford Hill. On 30 September 1944, the primacy of the United Armenian Catholic Church and then on 29 January 1945, the headship of the Ancient British Church were turned over by Dr. Monzani Heard to Bishop Hugh George de Willmott Newman, who merged them into his Catholicate of the West jurisdiction. Bishop Monzani Heard died on 15 August 1947 at the age of 81.
On 17 September (not 17 November as commonly reported in various accounts) 1944 at St. Paul’s Evangelical Church of England, Outwood, Bishop Benjamin Charles Harris, assisted by Bishop Hugh George de Willmott Newman, consecrated Gordon Pinder (Primus), Charles Leslie Saul, and Joseph K.C. Pillai into the Historic Episcopal Succession. These were the then bishops for the Evangelical Church of England, which had only consecrated its original bishops by presbyters. Dr. Harris, a long-time nonconformist chaplain at a mental hospital in Abbots Langley, was consecrated FPEC bishop for Essex on 25 July 1916 by Dr. Martin. One result of this consecration was that Bishop Pillai (1901 to 1970), who was the ECC bishop for India, eventually moved to the USA and, in 1968, became the first bishop of the American Episcopal Church, now known as the Anglican Province of America. On 23 August 1997, the Protestant Episcopal Reformed Church, the name by which the Evangelical Church of England was last known, was formally dissolved, its last Primus Dr. Saul (1947 to 1991), having died on 7 June 1991 at age 85.
Primus Hall continued the practice of consecrating bishops who did not serve in the FPEC. In 1952, he consecrated the Rev’d John Leslie Baines (born 1883); in 1959, he consecrated the Rev’d Terence Hope Davenport (born 1900). Both Bishops Baines and Davenport were non-parochial Anglican priests at their respective consecrations. They did not establish their own denominations because they remained ministers in good standing within the Church of England for the rest of their lives. It appears they just wanted to quietly hold independent episcopal rank without functioning as a bishop – a common practice among ordinary Anglican clergy.
Dr. Charles Dennis Boltwood (1889 to 1985) sets the next, and in a sense, the final stage in the history of the FPEC. A noted spiritualist in the 1930s and 1940s, sometime between 1946 and 1949, he had been cons. a bishop in the Catholicate of the West by +De Willmott Newman. On 25 December 1950, while on business in North America for the Catholicate, he was cons. by +Earl Anglin Lawrence James of the Old Roman Catholic Church in Canada. On 3 May 1951, he was ordained sub conditione a presbyter by Primus Hall when, in addition, he joined the FPEC. Dr. Boltwood was cons. on Palm Sunday (6 April) 1952 by Primus Hall as a bishop in the FPEC. A week later, on Easter Sunday (13 April) 1952, +Boltwood received a second cons. from +De Willmott Newman. On 25 March (Lady Day) 1954, Dr. Boltwood was elected to be the successor of Dr. Hall as Primus of the FPEC. Dr. Boltwood, on 6 July 1956, received a third cons. from +De Willmott Newman and, on 19 September 1958, was also cons. by +Konstantin Jaroshevich of the Holy Orthodox Church of Christ. On 9 October 1959, Primus Hall died, and Dr. Boltwood became Primus.
In 1957, Bishop Boltwood, with the blessings of Primus Hall, decided to expand the FPEC outside of the United Kingdom when he cons. Emmet Neil Enochs of California as Archbishop of the FPEC in the USA. In 1958, consecrations of bishops followed for West Africa and Canada. Dr. Boltwood, in the meantime (October 1960), quit his membership in the Catholicate of the West in order to concentrate on his FPEC work. Unfortunately, +Boltwood allowed his bishops and clergy such a free hand in their ministries that the original purpose of the FPEC was forgotten about, and most of them viewed the FPEC as a ‘starter church’ and quickly founded/joined other Anglican/Independent Catholic or Orthodox jurisdictions. (Dr. Boltwood’s continuing practice of theosophy and presenting himself as an old-fashioned evangelical Anglican did not help matters either.)
On 16 October 1966, +Boltwood cons. Albert John Fuge, Sr. (1911 to 1982), a Lutheran pastor, of New York City as the new bishop of the FPEC in New York State. On 8 September 1968, Dr. Fuge became Archbishop of New York and Metropolitan of the USA in the place of Dr. Enochs, who had become an Old Roman Catholic bishop. +Fuge’s headquarters was in the Boltwood Chapel, located at 177 West Broadway, New York City. Dr. Boltwood decided at the age of 89 years to retire as the Primus of the FPEC. He nominated Dr. Fuge to succeed him in this office, and the English-speaking bishops accepted this. At a ceremony held in the Park Road Methodist Church, New York City, Dr. Boltwood handed over the Deed of Succession to the Office of Bishop Primus to Dr. Fuge on 17 October 1978. Official witnesses to the change over were the Rt. Rev’d Dr. Ernest P. Parris (assistant FPEC bishop of New York) and the Rev’d Dr. Samuel Lewis (chaplain to Dr. Fuge). +Horst K.F. Block (1936 to 2008), missionary FPEC bishop for Germany and France, and +Emmanuel Samuel Yekorogha (died 1983) FPEC archbishop of West Africa, did not agree with this and the both of them elected Dr. Block to become International Primus of a schismatic FPEC which existed for some 22 years. On 7 October 2001 it became known as the International Free Protestant Episcopal Church.
On 30 April 1982 Dr. Fuge died and the FPEC bishop for Texas, the Rt. Rev’d Robert Randolph Rivette (1916 to 2004) succeeded him as FPEC Archbishop of the USA. +Rivette, a lawyer and retired USAF officer, had been cons. on 19 October 1971 in the Boltwood Chapel (which was officially dedicated several years later on 27 October 1974) by Dr. Fuge as chief consecrator, assisted by Dr. Boltwood and bishops Benjamin C. Eckardt, William C. Thompson, and Ernest P. Parris. This consecration occurred at the end of a Convocation of the FPEC in which the International Church passed a new Constitution and adopted policies for greater co-ordination between the work of the USA and Canadian branches of the Church. Dr. Boltwood and his wife, Mrs. Connie Boltwood, were the guests of honour at this Convocation. Dr. Charles K.S.S. Moffatt (1907 to 1989), FPEC Archbishop of Canada became the new International Primus, again at the nomination of Dr. Boltwood, on 7 July 1982. It was at this time that Dr. Boltwood directed the Rt. Rev’d Dr. Francis Thomas, D.Th. (cons. by +Boltwood in 1961) of London to wind down the operations of the FPEC in the United Kingdom, sending its original church records to Dr. Moffatt in Canada. On 7 November 1989, Dr. Moffatt died without designating a successor as Primus. In 1994, it was determined that by default, Bishop Dr. Follick, the senior cleric in the FPEC since July 1958, had been the legal Primus since +Moffat’s death.
On 19 April 1991, +Rivette cons. (sola) the Rev’d Melvin Frederick Larson (born 1920) of Lynnwood, WA, as FPEC Archbishop of the Pacific NW. +Larson had earlier been ordained a deacon and priest by +Walter Hollis Adams (1907 to 1991) of the Anglican Episcopal Church of North America before joining the FPEC. Since about 1997, +Rivette had been suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease, leaving +Larson, +Dr. John Marion Stanley (born 1923) of Port Orchard, WA, +Dr. Harry Kenneth Means (born 1919) of Port Charlotte, FL, +Dr. Edwin Duane Follick (born 1935) of Woodland Hills, CA, +Dr. James Nicholas Meola (born 1938) of Tom’s River, NJ, and +Dr. Ernest Percival Parris (born 1920) of Saint Albans, NY, was the only FPEC bishop in the USA. +Stanley had been cons. on 3 May 1959 in London by +Boltwood, assisted by +James B. Noble and +Reginald Benjamin Millard. +Means had been cons. on 16 August 1964 in London by +Boltwood, assisted by +Francis Thomas and Old Catholic bishop +Albert Dunstan Bell of the USA. +Follick had been cons. on 28 August 1968 in London by +Boltwood (sola). +Meola had been cons. on 13 March 1988 by +John Allen Rifenbury (chief consecrator) and +Robert R. Rivette.
Bishop Troy Arnold Kaichen of Virginia is listed in some histories as one of Meola’s consecrators, but he only consented to the consecration and was not present at it.
+Parris had been cons. in the spring of 1970 by +Fuge (sola). The only Canadian FPEC bishop is +Matthew John Carles Tuz (born 1951) of London, ON, Archbishop of Canada, who had been cons. on 3 July 1993 by +Rivette. On 8 March 2003, one of the last English ministers of the old FPEC, the Rev Cecil G. Cobran, B.Th., of London, England, died at 88. + Means passed away on 19 April 2004; + Rivette died on 25 April 2004; + Parris on 24 Sept. 2008.
From 27 July 2001 to 5 January 2006, the Rt. Rev’d Aaron Robin Orr (1940 to 2010) of Hamilton, ON, had been Canada’s bishop under Dr. Block’s International Free Protestant Episcopal Church. (+Block had consecrated him on 19 August 2001.) In January 2006, he and most of +Block’s bishops left his jurisdiction and formed the Christian Missionary Anglican Communion. Other former TIPEC bishops that left +Block included: Preston Bradley Carey (cons. 1 Aug. 1999 by + Robert George Montanus who was cons. 15 Dec. 1982 by +John M. Stanley), Joseph Spyridon Christopher Chaskos (cons. 15 Nov. 2004 by +Block), and Muhammad Wolfgang Schmidt (cons. 20 March 2005 by +Block). On 26 Nov. 2005, both +Block and +Schmidt had cons. Peter Leers at +Leers home chapel in Dusseldorf as Bishop for Germany. On 10 Aug. 2007 +Block and +Leers cons. Francesco Reale, a Lutheran pastor, as Bishop of Spain. On 12 February 2008, +Block died, and +Leers succeeded him as the Primus of TIFPEC. In February 2011, +Peers dissolved that jurisdiction, ending the schism.
During this time, the original FPEC, under Dr Boltwood’s supervision, had decided to wind down oversight operations in the U.K. in response to growth in the Americas. In 1982 he nominated Dr Charles Moffat, Archbishop of Canada, to become FPEC International Primus, through which decision, the Communion subsequently flourished and grew. Charles Moffatt served as Primus until his death in 1989 and was followed by Edwin Follick until he retired in 2015, when Richard Arthur Palmer succeeded him.
Five years later, after prayer and deliberation, the consistory of bishops, came to a unanimous and unique decision in our history. In considering implications of what was suggestive of perhaps unhelpful triumphalism of a leadership centred once again in England, and reminiscent of British historical colonialist experience, it replaced Archbishop Palmer, the then-presiding bishop. Archbishop Ronald Lee Firestone, a unifying figure, was thus elected as the presiding bishop of our Communion on 1st January 2020, as Archbishop Palmer remained with his own ecclesial structure in Britain. Subsequently, in 2022, under Mgr. Firestone’s patronage, Archbishop Raúl Toro was elected as the new presiding bishop.
Currently the FPEC, now renamed the AFCI, remains a vibrant communion of free Anglican Churches around the world, retaining its original purpose, living the founders’ vision of an Anglican reconciliation and unity.
The Mission Statement, approved in Bolivia at General Synod in 2012, is simple and unequivocally maintains its ecumenical and inclusive stance: “No matter who you are or where you are on your spiritual journey you are welcome to our table. The Gifts of God are free!”
Furthermore, our Episcopal manifesto of the same synod, declared us to be in solidarity for a just society. We reject all forms of imperialism and violence, physical, economic, psychological or other. We earnestly seek to promote actions in favour of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights with the purpose of making the Kingdom of God present here and now.
The Churches of our Communion in Europe hold attestable Apostolic Succession from the Roman Catholic Church of Brazil, as well as from the Old Roman Catholic Church of Great Britain, and from the Old Catholic Church of Utrecht (Netherlands). Further, in our rich heritage, the Churches of our Communion in the Americas, Asia and Africa hold attestable Apostolic Succession derived from the Church of England, the ECUSA, the Armenian Catholic Church, the Syrian Orthodox Church, and of the Roman Catholic Church of Spalatum. These last lines were in the jurisdictions that united us in 1897 to found the then Free Protestant Episcopal Church.
So it was, at the time of the election of Mgr. Firestone on 1st January 2020, the council of bishops determined to reaffirm our historic vision and integrity, and renamed the communion, ‘The Anglican Free Communion International – The Episcopal Free Church’, restating for the 21st century our Anglican and Catholic roots and identity for Christ in the world.
