A Old Catholic Church serving the people of central Swindon
The church is a 'family' and families have family trees. The Old Catholic Apostolic Church is a significant branch of the church that derived from the Roman Catholics who separated to form the 'Old Catholics of Utrecht'. Many of their successors embraced a liberality and openess which was successful in creating the 'Liberal Catholic' churches. Our church is related to them all through our 'family tree' and the coming together of Liberal Catholic, Old Catholic and Apostolic churches which led to the OCAC of today.
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The OCAC derives its Apostolic Successions from the historic Churches of the East and West, and can trace those successions through multiple lines right back to the first Apostles. The OCAC has significant ties with the historic Old Catholics and Liberal Catholic movement and is spiritual protector of the worldwide Independent Liberal Catholic Fellowship. OCAC is a worldwide church and has a small but significant presence on every continent.
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Other churches are organised as dioceses of congregations, that is great. We are organised of dioceses of ministries, so we serve as Christ calls us (street pastors, chaplains, Christian broadcasters etc.) and can still be with other denominations - our local church! - worship on a Sunday. We are part-time and unpaid, so have secular work too. But then... Paul was a tent maker, the Apostles: fishermen (apart from the tax-collector), and Jesus Himself was a carpenter!
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The Old Catholic Apostolic Church is a member of the Independent Catholic Churches Council. Many of its members are part of the Independent Liberal Catholic Fellowship and its bishops are members of the United Free Catholic Bishops Conference.
The history of the Old Catholic Apostolic Church and the Liberal Catholic Apostolic Church before it is in one sense the history of Christian liberalism throughout the ages, from the earliest pre-Constantinian times, through to the major liberal resurgence in nineteenth-century hermeneutics and the twentieth-century independent liberal churches. It embraces men and women who have not been able to reconcile their consciences to the teachings, even dogmas, of the mainstream churches, and who have sought a deeper expression of their relationship with God through the establishment of 'liberal' churches and a free Christianity. Often marginalised and misunderstood, Christian liberals stand for the unity of the church not through the restricting influence of dogma but through the embracing and reconcilation of diverse approaches to faith. These qualities were present in the earliest church; yet somehow were lost with the spread of the church in the west.
