Whenever a congregation really sees itself as a unit in the universal Church, in vital relation with the whole Body of Christ and participating in His mission to the world, a necessary foundation-stone of the ecumenical movement has been laid.

Every family of Riviera Presbyterian Church has been asked to read the Bible and pray together daily during National Christian Family Week and to undertake one project in which all members of the family participate.

It is unfair and unchristian to ask a person to take the sacred vows of Church membership before he has been carefully instructed concerning their implications.

George E. Sweazey writes: `` There is danger in trying to make admission to the Church so easy and painless that people will scarcely know that anything has happened ''.

The Roman Catholic Church has excommunicated one of its priests, Father Feeney, for insisting that there is no salvation outside the visible church.

There is no single " Anglican Church " with universal juridical authority as each national or regional church has full autonomy.

Each church has its own doctrine and liturgy, based in most cases on that of the Church of England ; and each church has its own legislative process and overall episcopal polity, under the leadership of a local primate.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, religious head of the Church of England, has no formal authority outside that jurisdiction, but is recognised as symbolic head of the worldwide communion.

Unlike other traditions, Anglicanism has never been governed by a magisterium nor by appeal to one founding theologian, nor by an extra-credal summary of doctrine ( such as the Westminster Confession of the Presbyterian Church ).

The Church of England has always thought of itself not as a new foundation but rather as a reformed continuation of the ancient " English Church " ( Ecclesia Anglicana ) and a reassertion of that church's rights.

All churches apart from the Armenian Apostolic Church must register with the government, and proselytizing was forbidden by law, though since 1997 the government has pursued more moderate policies.

Of all the various disagreements within the Christian Church, the Arian controversy has held the greatest force and power of theological and political conflict, with the possible exception of the Protestant Reformation.

Fixity does not lie in a hidden decree, therefore, but in corporate unity of the Church with Christ, whom it has come to know in the gospel and has learned to embrace in faith.

Because of its classical Greco-Roman style, the ruins of Mission San Juan Capistrano's Great Stone Church in California, United States has been called the " American Acropolis ".

Apostolic succession is the method whereby the ministry of the Christian Church is held to be derived from the apostles by a continuous succession, which has usually been associated with a claim that the succession is through a series of bishops.

He adds that this last has been controversial in that it has been claimed that this aspect of the doctrine is not found before the time of Augustine of Hippo, while others allege that it is implicit in the Church of the second and third centuries.

Since John Wesley ordained and sent forth every Methodist preacher in his day, who preached and baptized and ordained, and since every Methodist preacher who has ever been ordained as a Methodist was ordained in this direct " succession " from Wesley, then the Methodist Church teaches that it has all the direct merits coming from apostolic succession, if any such there be.

According to these statements, claims that one or more denominations might be the " true Church " are nothing more than propaganda which has evolved over centuries to support authoritarian claims --- based on tradition or based on scripture --- of merely human institutions.

Since the English Reformation, the Church of England has been more explicitly a state church and the choice is legally that of the British crown ; today it is made in the name of the Sovereign by the Prime Minister, from a shortlist of two selected by an ad hoc committee called the Crown Nominations Commission.

However, the Church declared that "' Extreme unction ' ... may also and more fittingly be called ' anointing of the sick '" ( emphasis added ), and has itself adopted the latter term, while not outlawing the former.

`` That is the answer the ungodly will always make when the Church points its fingers at their sins.

And John's reply was always the same: `` Anything that affects souls is the concern of the Church!!

The former missionary always remained devoted to the Baptist Church.

People in the Middle Ages did not always know to which of the many lords, the Church and the individual churches, the towns, princes, and kings, they were subordinate.

From then on, until 1959, the Pope of Alexandria, as Patriarch of All Africa, always named an Egyptian ( a Copt ) to be the Archbishop of the Ethiopian Church.

However, the church in communion with the Bishop of Rome, both in its Western form and in that of the Eastern Catholic Churches, has always considered itself to be the historic Catholic Church, with all others as " non-Catholics " and regularly refers to itself as " the Catholic Church ".

Their acceptance among early Christians was widespread, though not universal, and the Bible of the early Church always included, with varying degrees of recognition, books now called deuterocanonical.

Its present canon law requires that an ecumenical council be convoked and presided over, either personally or through a delegate, by the Pope, who is also to decide the agenda ; but the church makes no claim that all past ecumenical councils observed these present rules, declaring only that the Pope's confirmation or at least recognition has always been required, and saying that the version of the Nicene Creed adopted at the First Council of Constantinople ( 381 ) was accepted by the Church of Rome only seventy years later, in 451.

In 1551 the Council of Trent definitively declared: " Because Christ our Redeemer said that it was truly his body that he was offering under the species of bread 6: 51, it has always been the conviction of the Church of God, and this holy Council now declares again, that by the consecration of the bread and wine there takes place a change of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of the body of Christ our Lord and of the whole substance of the wine into the substance of his blood.

In all his criticism of clerical follies and abuses, he had always protested that he was not attacking the Church itself or its doctrines, and had no enmity toward churchmen.

Of a strictly religious, although not narrow, disposition, he sought at any cost to keep his subjects from falling away from the Church, but his methods of attaining his object were not always free from reproach.

Paul VI himself, even as commission members issued their personal views over the years, always reaffirmed the teachings of the Church, repeating them more than once in the first years of his Pontificate.

From the onset the Kievan princes followed the Byzantine example and kept the Church dependent on them, even for its revenues, so that the Russian Church and state were always closely linked.

Hedwig always helped the poor and donated all her fortune to the Church.

The Eighth Council of Toledo ( 653 ) recorded its admiration of his character in these glowing terms: " The extraordinary doctor, the latest ornament of the Catholic Church, the most learned man of the latter ages, always to be named with reverence, Isidore ".

British Methodism does not have bishops ; however, it has always been characterized by a strong central organization, the Connexion, which holds an annual Conference ( note that the Church retains the 18th century spelling " connexion " for many purposes ).

The Catholic Church, possibly motivated by its claim against her property, has always asserted that Matilda never had any child at all.

In the Orthodox Church the use of the menorah has been preserved, always standing on or behind the altar in the sanctuary.

In fact, his relationship with the Church was always excellent.

Nestorius himself always insisted that his views were orthodox, though they were deemed heretical at the First Council of Ephesus in 431, leading to the Nestorian Schism, when churches supportive of Nestorius broke away from the rest of the Christian Church.

Old Catholics often refer to the Church Father St. Vincent of Lerins and his saying: " We must hold fast to that faith which has been believed everywhere, always, and by all the Faithful.