Apostolic Episcopal Church

The Apostolic Episcopal Church (The Holy Eastern Apostolic and Catholic Orthodox Church), founded in 1925 and recognized by the Statutes of the State of New York in 1932, is an autonomous and fully independent Christian church that combines the heritage of the Chaldean Catholic Church, of which it is an extension, with that of the Catholic tradition within Anglicanism. It is thus one of the older separated or “continuing” Anglican bodies currently in existence, and one of the few communions not formed by way of a split or division in another Church body.

The mission of the Apostolic Episcopal Church has not only been towards congregational outreach but has been specifically directed towards ecumenical reunion, firstly in respect of bringing together bishops of different denominations through its communion, and secondly by the creation and dissemination of an Ecumenical Apostolic Succession in pursuance of a resolution of the 1920 Lambeth Conference. This work was furthered through a formal concordat relationship with the Catholicate of the West, a British-originated union of the smaller Apostolic churches, from 1944 onwards, with the Catholicate eventually being absorbed into the Apostolic Episcopal Church. This mission leads the Apostolic Episcopal Church to be regarded by some as an “inner church”; a body whose work is as much directed towards the existing communities of Christians as outside them.