Infant baptism is the practice of baptizing infants or young children. Infant baptism is also called christening by some faith traditions.
The Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) is the second-largest Presbyterian church body, behind the Presbyterian Church (USA), and the largest conservative Calvinist denomination in the United States. The PCA is Reformed in theology and presbyterian in government.
The Westminster Confession of Faith, or simply the Westminster Confession, is a Reformed confession of faith. Drawn up by the 1646 Westminster Assembly as part of the Westminster Standards to be a confession of the Church of England, it became and remains the "subordinate standard" of doctrine in the Church of Scotland and has been influential within Presbyterian churches worldwide.
The Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC) is a confessional Presbyterian denomination located primarily in the United States, with additional congregations in Canada, Bermuda, and Puerto Rico. It was founded by conservative members of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (PCUSA), who objected to the rise of Liberal and Modernist theology in the 1930s. The OPC is considered to have had an influence on evangelicalism far beyond its size.
The Evangelical Presbyterian Church (EPC) is an American church body holding to presbyterian governance and Reformed theology. It is a conservative Calvinist denomination. It is most distinctive for its approach to the way it balances certain liberties across congregations on "non-essential" doctrines, such as egalitarianism in marriage or the ordination of women, alongside an affirmation of core "essential" doctrinal standards.
The Reformed Presbyterian Church in the United States was a small Presbyterian denomination based in the United States that merged into the Vanguard Presbytery. The RPCUS was established in 1983, subscribes to the unrevised Westminster Confession and upholds biblical inerrancy. The denomination self-identified as theonomic.
Infant communion refers to the practice of giving the Eucharist, often in the form of consecrated wine mingled with consecrated bread, to young children. This practice is standard throughout Eastern Christianity, where communion is given at the Divine Liturgy to all baptized and chrismated church members regardless of age. Infant communion is less common in most of Western Christianity.
The Reformed Presbyterian Church General Assembly (RPCGA) is a Presbyterian church body and conservative denomination in the United States established in 1991. The RPCGA was founded by members of the Reformed Presbyterian Church in the United States.
Jennings Ligon Duncan III is an American Presbyterian scholar and pastor. He is Chancellor of Reformed Theological Seminary.
The Federal Vision is a Reformed evangelical theological conversation that focuses on covenant theology, Trinitarian thinking, the sacraments of baptism and communion, biblical theology and typology, justification, and postmillennialism. A controversy arose in Reformed and Presbyterian circles in response to views expressed at a 2002 conference entitled The Federal Vision: An Examination of Reformed Covenantalism. The ongoing controversy involves several Reformed denominations including the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC), the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), the United Reformed Churches in North America (URCNA), and the Reformed Presbyterian Church in the United States (RPCUS), and the Protestant Reformed Churches in America (PRCA).
The Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC), formerly the Confederation of Reformed Evangelical Churches, was founded in 1998 as a body of churches that hold to Reformed (Calvinistic) theology. Member churches include those from Presbyterian, Reformed, and Reformed Baptist backgrounds. The CREC has over a hundred member churches in the United States, Canada, Japan, Russia, Hungary, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Belarus, Poland, Brazil, Jersey, and the Czech Republic. These are organised into nine presbyteries, named after figures in church history: Anselm, Athanasius, Augustine, Bucer, Hus, Knox, Kuyper, Tyndale, and Wycliffe.
Peter James Leithart is an American author, minister, and theologian, who serves as president of Theopolis Institute for Biblical, Liturgical, & Cultural Studies in Birmingham, Alabama. He previously served as Senior Fellow of Theology and Literature as well as Dean of Graduate Studies at New Saint Andrews College. He was selected by the Association of Reformed Institutions of Higher Education to be one of the organization's 2010–2012 Lecturers. He is the author of commentaries on the Book of Kings, the Book of Samuel, the Books of Chronicles, the Book of Revelation, as well as a Survey of the Old Testament. Other works include books on topics such as Dante's Inferno, Shakespeare, Jane Austen, and a biography of Constantine. He is also the author of a book of children's bedtime stories titled Wise Words based on the Book of Proverbs.
David Steele, Sr. was a Reformed Presbyterian or Covenanter minister.
James Burrell Jordan is an American Protestant theologian and author. He is the director of Biblical Horizons ministries, an organisation in Niceville, Florida that publishes books, essays and other media dealing with Bible commentary, Biblical theology, and liturgy. It adheres to biblical absolutism including Young Earth Creationism and is committed to the concept of biblical theocracy.
Robert Adam Holliday Lusk was a Reformed Presbyterian or Covenanter minister of the strictest sort, in a century which, according to Presbyterian historian Robert E. Thompson, was marked by increasing relaxation into less stringent manifestations of doctrine and practice amongst all branches of Presbyterianism. His career crossed paths with many prominent ministers and he was involved in numerous ecclesiastical courts at pivotal moments in the history of the Reformed Presbyterian Church. Amongst Reformed Presbyterians, he was an "Old Light," and amongst "Old Lights," he would lay claim to be an "Original Covenanter." He was descended from a long line of Scotch-Irish, and the Lusks had fled from Scotland to Ireland, escaping religious persecution; many of them settled in America prior to the American Revolutionary War.
ECO: A Covenant Order of Evangelical Presbyterians is an evangelical Presbyterian denomination in the United States. As a Presbyterian church, ECO adheres to Reformed theology and Presbyterian polity. It was established in 2012 by former congregations and members of the Presbyterian Church (USA), abbreviated PC(USA). Denominational disputes over theology—particularly ordination of practicing homosexuals as pastors and gay marriage—and bureaucracy led to the founding of ECO. In 2018, ECO has over 383 congregations, 103,425 covenant partners and over 500 pastors. ECO churches are egalitarian in beliefs and ordain women as pastors and elders.
The Africa Evangelical Presbyterian Church (AEPC) is a growing conservative Presbyterian and Reformed Church which adheres to the Westminster Confession of Faith started in Kenya, later spread to the surrounding countries like Burundi, Tanzania, Congo and as far as Zimbabwe. The headquarters of the church is located in Nairobi, Kenya. The current Moderator is Rev. Dr Joseph Mutei installed on Sunday 26th June 2022.
Presbyterianism has had a presence in the United States since colonial times and has exerted an important influence over broader American religion and culture.
In Reformed theology, covenant succession is the idea that the children of believers "are expected to succeed in the faith of their parents, and this is accomplished through the divinely ordained means of covenant nurture." Other terms used are covenant expectation, children in the covenant, and practical covenant theology. Robert S. Rayburn describes it as the idea that "the purpose of God that his saving grace run in the lines of generations".
