Ecclesiastical Assembly of Sarpedon

Ecclesiastical Assembly of Sarpedon
Classification	Protestant
Scripture	Bible
Theology	Collegiate Protestant theology
Polity	Episcopal
Structure	Communion
President of the Congress of Bishops	Rev. Mel Valento
Administration	Ecclesiastical Assembly
Region	Sarpedon
Origin	1978
Separations	College of Levantine Churches

The Ecclesiastical Assembly of Sarpedon is a Protestant Church established in Sarpedon in 1978. It was established from a segment of the College of Levantine Churches, with which it shares full communion, theology, and a similar structure. Adherents and churches related to the Assembly are known informally as "Assemblist", although like "Collegiate" this term does not have any official standing.

Structure and theology

Theology

The Ecclesiastical Assembly of Sarpedon professes to have Collegiate Protestant theology, adhering to all of the professions of faith stated in the 1954 Agremeent which founded the College of Levantine Churches. Accordingly, it professes sola fide, sola scriptura, and two sacraments.

Structure and organization

The Ecclesiastical Assembly of Sarpedon is organized in the same fashion as the College of Levantine Churches, comprised of three episcopal congregations for the governance of each of the three traditions within the Assembly. The first and largest is the Episcopal Congregation of the Fraternal Church, which was founded in 1974 as a merger of most high church Protestant groups within the College of Levantine Churches. The second is the Episcopal Congregation for the Continental Church. The Continental Church employs a Protestant variation of the Caphiric Rite, including the use of Sacred Ash; it retains Collegiate theology while employing local traditions established since the Great Schism of 1615. The third is the Episcopal Congregation for the Continental Methodist Church, which like its Levantine counterpart the Methodist Episcopal Congregation, employs Methodist liturgy while retaining episcopal polity.

The Ecclesiastical Assembly employs Metropoles to organize the territories in which it has a presence. They are governed by Metropolitan Committee, comprised of three bishops, one from each of the episcopal congregations. 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.

The Ecclesiastical Assembly has no mission areas, instead providing personnel and funding on a collaborative basis for the College of Levantine Churches' missions.

History

The Ecclesiastical Assembly of Sarpedon was established in 1978 as a secession of the College of Levantine Churches' province of Sarpedon. The split occurred within the context of the Occidental Cold War, specifically due to political pressure and cultural opposition related to Levantine influences during the nadir of Levanto-Sarpic relations. Beginning in 1968, political leaders in Caphiria began to express opposition to a college of "Levantine Churches" operating openly within the Imperium, citing it as an example of Levantine Creep and a contravention of the primary principle of the Great Schism of 1615, namely religious independence from Levantia. Church leaders in Sarpedon were also concerned, stating that associations with Levantia made growing their congregations difficult. With these concerns in mind, the President of the Congress of Bishops and Government of Caphiria held several secret meetings throughout 1976-77, and the establishment of the Ecclesiastical Assembly out of the Province of Sarpedon was agreed upon. As part of this secession, the Assembly would retain full communion with the College but separate leadership. The Ecclesiastical Assembly (as in the body of bishops) would also include several appointed delegates from Caphiria and other states in Sarpedon to ensure independence from Levantia and separation of Levantine interests from church affairs.

The province of Sarpedon had been established in 1960 as a combination of several "aboriginal churches" - Protestant churches that existed in Sarpedon which developed there organically - and "Levantine influenced churches", churches which were associated with ones in Levantia or made up of churches belonging to Levantine and emigrants diaspora.

Aboriginal churches

The Protestant Reformation occurred in Sarpedon around the same period as Levantia, but had much less permanence and social penetration due to the strong authority of the state in the Third Imperium. Instead, reformed theologians operated within the confines of the Catholic Church's hierarchy. Movements such as Jansenism were common in the Church in Sarpedon at that time, and reformed theologians were suddenly given prominent place in the Imperial Church following the Great Schism of 1615. Despite this, several Protestant sects emerged, although many of them were low church in nature or had unsteady hierarchies and Apostolic succession due to state persecution. The largest contingent of Protestants were known as "Dissenters", so called because they dissented from the "middle course" of reformed theology embraced by the Imperial Church. The majority of these originated from the radical faction of the early Imperial Church, who were suppressed in 1623. Unlike Levantia, the relative reformed appeal of the Imperial Church as well as more stringent social controls meant that no firm underground Protestant Church could develop in most of Sarpedon during the 17th centuries, with small sects instead remaining underground throughout the next century.

The fortunes of reformed believers changed radically with the dawn of the Fourth Imperium. The government shifted efforts from persecution to cooption, and in 1799 the Ecclesio Reformatio, the Reformed Assembly, which was a state run and state approved reformed theology church which operated alongside the officially sanctioned Imperial Church. The Reformed Assembly retained the more dramatically reformed theology of the underground believers and their low church worship services with the ecclesiastical polity of the Imperial Church, creating ten Bishops for reformed believers. The effort at cooption was successful, with most underground believers coming forward to join. The Assembly functioned as a form of controlled opposition for the next five decades. A Protestant version of the Caphiric Rite was imposed on these Churches, engraining its cultural familiarity among Protestant believers, gradually transforming Caphiric reformed believers into a high church continuum of faith. It was abolished in 1852 as part of a general effort to restore religious unity, and although reformed believers were not persecuted going forward, state support dried up. With a lack of state appointment and funding, the briefly unified reform movement split into nearly two hundred different denominations, with the splits largely based on lineages of bishops and legitimate church governance.

The greatly divided reformed church in Sarpedon remained in place when the College of Levantine Churches was established in 1954. While the College began to organize Levantine diaspora communities across Sarpedon, it began to draw interest by the late 1950s from some of the "ecclesiastical reformed" communities which resulted from the 1852 disestablishment. When the Province of Sarpedon was organized in 1960, it included many Levantine communities but also eighteen of the former split denominations, with all eighteen bishops mutually recognized and given provisional Holy Orders to legitimize their Apostolic succession. By 1965, the number included nearly 50 former denominations.

Levantine influences

Several churches directly related to Levantine populations in Sarpedon were active prior to 1954, nearly all of which were associated with or shared communion one of the churches which were founding members of the College of Levantine Churches. Specifically, Ænglish Old Believers as well as Lutherans associated with the Lutheran Church of Dericania operated throughout much of the continent in small numbers. Old Catholics, due to their split with the Pope in Urceopolis, were also safeguarded by the Government of Caphiria beginning in 1900 and encouraged to a small degree before most were compelled to join the Imperial Church in the 1920s, though some Old Catholic dioceses and bishops remained associated with their colleagues in Levantia by 1954. Most predominantly, Levantine-associated Protestants primarily resided in Lariana and insular colonial possessions of Kiravia throughout the continent. When the groups with which they shared communion joined together to form the College of Levantine Churches, most local congregations complied and joined the organization as well, lobbying for the formation of a local apparatus of church governance. These efforts came to fruition with the establishment of the Province of Sarpedon in 1960. Some groups, particularly those Protestant churches in Arona, resisted the transition, only fully joining the Ecclesiastical Assembly in 2020.