FastCounter by LinkExchange
Born of pain and ashes. A healing place. Created by wounded healers in the power of the Holy Spirit. An amazing variety of theological leanings, forms of church structure, rules of internal discipline and patterns of liturgical worship. A rich and colorful historic apostolic succession. Intimately small faith communities and house churches. These are some of the many positive ways the "independent movement" can be described.
I use the phrases "the autocephalous movement" and "the independent movement" to describe a loose grouping of diverse, newer, smallish, self-governing apostolic-succession Christian church denominations that are not connected to (or formally recognized by), for the most part, the larger, older, apostolic-succession churches*. Some folks also use the terms, "Autocephalous Orthodox", "Independent Catholic", "Non-SCOBA Orthodox", "Continuing Anglican", "Alternative Catholic" and "Old Catholic".
Some of these churches are autogenic or self-starting: entepreneurial Christianity at its best! Others were created by splits from another Christian denomination. Still others were left stranded due to political machinations in their parent churches.
Some have a "Roman-Catholic-like" look, feel and texture (whether post-Vatican II or pre-Vatican II). Others a more "Orthodox" feel. Some others, an "Anglican" feel, or sometimes even an "evangelical" feel. Some have a "blended" feel. And some have a look-and-feel all their own.
Most embrace a fairly orthodox Christian theology. Others are theosophical. And still others are, well, interesting.
* These older, larger apostolic-succession churches include the Roman Catholic Church, the Orthodox Communion, the Anglican Communion, the Old Catholic Communion/Utrecht, those Lutheran churches which retained their apostolic succession (Church of Sweden, Church of Estonia, Church of Finland) and the several pre-conciliar churches in the Middle East, Africa and India.
