College of Levantine Churches

The College of Levantine Churches is a  of churches primarily within the Levantine Union. It is the largest Protestant denomination in Levantia and the second largest denomination behind the Catholic Church. Members of the College of Levantine Churches are typically referred to using the term "Collegiate", though this term is not used in any official Church capacity.

Ecclesiology and polity
The College of Levantine Churches is defined by the shared views on ecclesiology, theology, and, to a lesser extent, liturgy of the constituent members of the College. Accordingly, its governance is in nature, and this episcopal polity was the defining shared characteristics of the constituent members of the College prior to additional reforms made since the College's foundation. The College, accordingly, adheres to a belief in, an unbroken, personal succession from the requiring , though within the College there are different views as to whether or not ordination is a. While this belief is not as prominent or necessarily emphasized within its overall theology as it is in the Catholic Church, it is nonetheless a foundational belief of the College. Since the 1970s reform, the College teaches that the Church of Christ is the "whole Christian people, regardless of denomination, and the successors of the Apostles as assembled in the Congress of Bishops of the College of Levantine Churches."

Most theologians of the College and most of the constituent churches within it adhere to, an ecclesiological proposition that the includes various Christian denominations whether in formal communion or not. Adherents of branch theory believe the College, the Chantry of Alstin, the Catholic Church, the former Imperial Church, and several other churches are included. Branch theory is contested, especially by the reformed minority within the College who teach a modified version of the idea, arguing that only the College's members are "legitimate" branches under this theory.

Mary
The College of Levantine Churches professes that views of Mary's, , and other related beliefs usually related to Catholic are extrabiblical claims that may or may not be held by individual believers but are not necessary to the Christian life. This position, known as the "Collegiate Compromise", was designed to reconcile the traditional beliefs of the and  segments of the Church with the more conventionally  views. Under this posisition, the College of Levantine Churches makes no definitive claim on the truth of these concepts but rejects the importance placed upon them by the Catholic Church.

History
In 1954, following the formal establishment of the Levantine Union, the College of Levantine Churches was established by the Association of Old Believers, the Lutheran Church of Dericania, and the Old Catholic Association of Levantia. These groups had been collaborating to various degrees during the early 20th century and had grown closer during the Second Great War, when they offered united relief services as well as a united front on teachings about the war. The official Chantric organization in Levantia joined at the end of the year, with the Methodist Church of Corcra joining in 1958 and several other churches joining in the intervening decades. The College was intended to be a formalized, though loose, communion of the major churches in Levantia with an. The Churches mutually recognized each others ordinations and validity and also agreed to a broad agreement of faith. The 1954 Agreement, signed between the members, established a Congress of Bishops intended to meet irregularly to resolve issues as they arose, while leaving individual churches to govern themselves autonomously.

Old Believers
"Old Believers", in the context of Levantine, describes a varied number of beliefs and sects associated with descent from the Ænglish Church, the Protestant state church of the Ænglish Kingdom prior to its destruction in the Nordmontaine War. The Ænglish Church established a moderate position between Catholic practice and teaching and beliefs. A hierarchical church, the Ænglish Church was established as a continuation of the established Catholic Church in Anglei prior to the reformation, and retained much of its structure and outward rituals. Accordingly, Ænglish Church adherents retained a sense of "" as opposed to many other reformed denominations.

With the destruction of the Ænglish realm in the Nordmontaine War, the vast majority of its adherents left Levantia for Pharisedoms such as Alstin, either as refugees or being deported there. Many more were sent abroad by the Dragonnades or converted back to the Catholic Church. Only a very small number of Ænglish Church adherents remained in the Ænglish duchies or Levantia as a whole by 1600. Of these, the vast majority publicly feigned adherence to the Catholic Church while meeting in secret to hold Ænglish-language liturgies according to the. A small minority departed organized society to live as small sects living in the mountains and hills, living in a manner closer to tribes. The so-called "Wild Old Believers" were probably never more than a few hundred, but stories of rabid s living in the wild remained the subject of popular Levantine legends and as for centuries to come. Throughout the 1600s and 1700s, the Imperial Inquisition managed to root out dozens of cells of Old Believers, with few remaining by the 1790s. The separate nature of these cells meant a divergence of beliefs, with many groups becoming more reformed and eventually drifting away to more outwardly reformed underground groups. Most of the clergy during the underground period were either non-ordained volunteers, Catholic priests who had fallen away, or a rare cleric from Alstin.

Old Believers received a significant boon with the Treaty of Lariana. The Treaty of Lariana allowed for a significant influx of Chantric clergy whom could operate openly without the interference of the Imperial Inquisition; many Old Believers now partook in legal Chantric liturgies, which, although divergent from the Levantine practice, were preferable due to their legal status. Many faith leaders of the Old Believer community were also secretly ordained by Chantric clergy during this period. Like many other Protestant groups during the early 19th century, the Old Believers also benefitted greatly from the Alstin loophole

In 1890, the the newly founded United Angle States created a limited legal framework under which Old Believers could worship, streamlining the unenforced Inquisitorial laws, legal patchwork of Lariana-descended allowances, and other provisions. The legalization occurred within the context of, as the small country hoped to engage this previously persecuted Ænglish minority group. The legalization had the intention - and effect - of bringing some Old Believers back to Anglei and boosting the population and economy in the country. In late 1890, the Association of Old Believers was established out of a number of the most prominent Old Believer communities in with leadership under the Bishop of Stretton, the only bishopric legally allowed. This organization represented the first time Old Believers received legal recognition in Levantia or any former Ænglish territory since the destruction of the Ænglish Church in the 1540s. The Association had a contentious first two decades as divergent groups had wildly different liturgical and doctrinal practices, with most of its teachings still rooted in the 1520s Acts of Godwin supplemented with work done by Chantric theologians in the intervening time. The Association convened a Convocation in 1915 which streamlined its theology and reunited most of its constituent groups under a Doctrine of Fifty Points. By this time, the Association, though small, was growing, and had faith communities erected throughout the Holy Levantine Empire and Ultmar. The Association formally entered communion with the Chantry of Alstin in 1922. By 1950, it's estimated that the Association had 125,000 adherents. It was a founding member of the College in 1954, having worked closely with the Old Catholic Association of Levantia since its inception for mutual ordination and consecrations and the Lutheran Church of Dericania on political matters relating to the Third Fratricide.

Chantric Christians in Levantia
Adherents of the Chantry of Alstin were first recorded in Levantia in 1670, though commerce from Alstin reached Levantia as early as 1579 and presumably Chantric beliefs may have been present among the merchants, with commercial activity continuing on an irregular basis until the Treaty of Lariana in 1806. Chantric clergy arrived following the Treaty and were allowed to offer worship services, though initially these services were offered for the benefit of and mostly attended by Alstinian diplomatic personnel and merchants. By the late 1810s, it became local embassy policy for native Levantine Protestants to be allowed entry into these services, and by the 1820s it was encouraged alongside the embrace of the Alstin loophole, allowing for diplomatic protection of Protestant services if an Alstinian official was present. While the official presence of Alstin within Levantia helped other groups find some legal protection, Chantric Christianity itself quickly became the most prevalent and widely accessible form of Protestantism in Levantia, with worship services being held in the open and clerics being able to operate publicly, if somewhat limited to their proximity to Alstinian activity.

By 1845, there was a significant enough Chantric population in Levantia - possibly as high as 10,000 Levantines - to warrant a reorganization of Church function there. Previously, clerics associated with embassies or merchants were assigned largely on an ad hoc basis, serving very limited time abroad and returning to Alstin to their normal parish functions. In 1846, the Imperial Diet - in the midst of the Third Caroline War and needing to maintain good relations abroad - gave the government of Alstin, and by extension the Chantry, permission to organize a formal hierarchy in Levantia. This permission came with a strict prohibition on missionary activity and disallowance of "prosletyzing...in any manner". This had the effect of creating a less open method of joining the Chantric Church than had existed in decades prior as local clerics sought to avoid confrontations with the Imperial Inquisition, but committed Protestants were still able to join with some commitment. Historians have uncovered specific episodes of Chantric clergy offering to local and Inquisitorial authorities in exchange for ignoring their growing populations, though it is unclear how widespread this practice was. The 1846 permission from the Diet lead to the adoption by the Chantry, in late 1846, of the Instrument of Organization in Levantia, which established a Bishop of Ericaner (in modern Lutsana) as head of the Chantry in Levantia, formally the ecclesiastical "Province of Dericania and the Vandarch". As a result, the Chantry's local church in Levantia took the popular name the "Provincial Church", though this name was never used in any official capacity. Along with a formal episcopate, the Chantry also assigned 25 permanent clerics to Levantia to serve under the Bishop, and gave the Bishop wide authority to ordain deacons and priests as needed. The Instrument of Organization created the first public-facing Protestant church organization in the Holy Levantine Empire since the end of the Great Confessional War. As was the case before, the public availability of the Chantry greatly increased its accessibility and desirability to local Protestants, with 50,000 adherents by 1900 and many native-born Chantric clergy being organized between 1846 and 1900.

As religious laws began to be eased by the end of the 19th century, the competitive advantage the Chantry in Levantia enjoyed declined, and accordingly its growth rate tapered off to begin the 20th century. While it remained the most prestigious Protestant Church in the Holy Levantine Empire, it began to lose ground to groups with localized influences and traditions. The Chantry's position of leadership among Protestant churches was enhanced by the Association of Old Believers, a Protestant group in Anglei, deciding to join formal communion with the Chantry in 1922, bolstering both the local Chantry leadership as well as the Chantry's overall position in Levantia. By 1950, it retained its position of prestige and influence over Levantine Protestantism, but had fallen behind in terms of having the most adherents, having about 85,000 members by that year. The hierarchy in Levantia and Alstin were reluctant to join the Church to the emerging College established in 1954, but the local adherents and even most clergy felt more of an affinity for Levantine interests than Alstinian ones. By the end of 1954, the Province of Dericania and the Vandarch was given permission to formally join the College of Levantine Churches. As a result, the Chantry's independent church in Levantia ceased to exist, but its two local churches - the Province as well as the Old Believers - were joined together, and the College as a result entered into partial communion with the Chantry of Alstin as a condition for the Provincial Church joining the College.

Reformed Church Project
Beginning in the late 1980s, an effort was made to attract adherents into the College. Adherents of the project believed that reformed theology was not necessarily incompatible with episcopal ecclesiology. To that end, the Episcopal Congregation of the Reformed Church (ECRC) was created as the College's third Church at a meeting of the Congress of Bishops in 1994, merging small groups recently joined to the Church as well as some of the more reformed elements on the periphery of the Fraternal Church. By 2010, it became apparent that the effort to attract adherents away from some traditions such as Mercantile Protestantism had largely been a failure, though the ECRC nonetheless had about two dozen congregations across Levantia by that year. College leaders began to shift away towards the active construction of the ECRC after 2010, with both rhetoric, attention, and funding shifting to other matters. Since then, the project has been largely deemed a "failure" in internal College documents, and some Bishops have offered that the ECRC remains merely a "token outreach effort" to the other major current of Protestant thought.

Episcopal congregations
Episcopal congregations are the administrative arm of the respective Churches within the College, serving both as a representation of that Church itself as well as the basic organizational structure in which it functions. As the name would suggest, the episcopal congregations are lead by a colleges of all bishops within that Church, functioning as the effective leadership for their respective Churches. Prior to 1974, the episcopal congregations held significant autonomy and power over their Churches, ranging from personnel to theological decisions. Each of the constituent churches that formed the College had their own episcopal congregation. Since the 1974 reforms, episcopal congregations are primarily limited to having authority over their Church's liturgical practices and any rules that may accompany them. In addition to the deliberate reforms to unify the Church, the practical impact of the formation of the Fraternal Church (which had a vast majority of the College's adherents and bishops) meant that the significance of the episcopal congregations was largely superseded by the Congress of Bishops, which became the central organizing element for the College.

Episcopal congregations are lead by a Bishop-Congregant, a rotating office with a one year term elected by their fellow bishops. In addition to authority over liturgy, the Bishop-Congregant has the formal task of submitting his nominations for bishops to the Congress of Bishops, though this action is merely a formality on both ends; the Congress of Bishops almost always approves any nominee, and the nominations themselves are forwarded along by nominating committees within the episcopal congregations; these committees receive and consider petitions from metropolitan churches and even groups of lay persons.

Metropoles
The College of Levantine Churches is divided into administrative areas known as "Metropoles", which are similar in scope and role as s within the Catholic Church. Unlike the Catholic Church, Metropoles are governed by Metropolitan Committee, comprised of three bishops, one from each of the episcopal congregations. This structure, in part based on  18:20 ("For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them."), is designed to ensure each of the episcopal congregations are represented in local governance. Metropolitan Committees handle responsibilities such as sanctions of clerics, ordinations, as well as submissions of individuals to the episcopal congregations to be considered for consecration as bishop. Each bishop within a Metropole is responsible for the daily administration and oversight of most issues for their particular Church within the Metropole. Accordingly, despite the equal share of authority within Metropolitan Committees, it has been observed that the bishops of the Fraternal Church have de facto authority over all believers within a Metropole due to the overwhelming majority presence of the Fraternal Church within the College. As a result, Fraternal Church bishops are often expected to make shows of humility to the two other bishops within Metropolitan Committees to avoid offense or pretention of authority.

Metropoles were formed as part of the 1974 reforms, consolidating many disparate local administrative structures. Prior to the establishment of the Episcopal Congregation of the Reformed Church in 1994, most Metropolitan Committees had two members, though some particularly large Metropoles had three, with the third member agreed upon by the bishops of the Fraternal and Methodist episcopal congregations within that Metropole.

Partial communions
The College of Levantine Churches has established, within its ecclesiology, the concept of "partial communion". Churches in partial communion with the College of Levantine Churches are recognized as having "valid historic episcopacy and clerical ordination" and whose theology "is substantially similar" to that of the College, even if it possesses "specific cultural or traditional methods of exploring and explaining theological concepts", meaning that the church in question largely teaches the same doctrine with some minor differences in expression. These differences in expression may prevent full communion, but partial communion churches are viewed, nonetheless, to have some share in the role of the.