Association of Christian Evangelical Baptists of Italy

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Basic data
Unione Cristiana Evangelica
Battista d'Italia - UCEBI
Spiritual direction: President: Anna Maffei
Membership: World Baptist Federation
European Baptist
Federation
World Council of Churches
Italian Federation of
Protestant Churches
Municipalities : 116 (as of 2009)
Parishioners: approx. 6200 (as of 2009)
Share of the
total population:		 approx. 0.01%
Address: Piazza San Lorenzo
in Lucina 35
00186 Roma
Official Website: http://www.ucebi.it/

The Union of Christian Evangelical Baptists of Italy ( UCEBI for short , Italian : Unione Cristiana Evangelica Battista d'Italia ) is a community of Baptist churches in Italy .

history

Baptist Church in Rome

First it was British missionaries who laid the foundation stone for the Baptist movement in Italy in 1863. Just a few years later, American missionaries came to Italy. The first Baptist congregations in Italy came into being in some of the larger cities and surrounding villages. In 1905 the establishment of a theological training center for full-time and volunteer employees began. However, this was closed in 1932 by the fascist rulers.

In 1921 the British Baptist Mission Society withdrew from the Italian mission and placed responsibility for the churches it had founded in the hands of the foreign mission of the American Southern Baptist Convention . This prompted the establishment of the Opera Battista in 1939 , a forerunner of the federation of Christian-Evangelical Baptist congregations in Italy that was brought into being twenty years later . From the beginning the Italian Baptist Union sought contact with denominational churches and communities, as a result of which in 1990 a significant agreement was reached between the Baptists, the Waldensian Church and the Methodists . Today there is full church fellowship between the denominations mentioned. A joint weekly magazine, the riforma, is also published. Recently convergence talks have also been held between Italian Baptists and Pentecostals .

Organization, ecumenism, statistics

The autonomous local congregations united in the Unione Cristiana Evangelica Battista d'Italia belong to the European Baptist Federation and the Baptist World Federation . Further memberships exist with the World Council of Churches ( World Council of Churches , WCC) and with the Conference of European Churches (CEC). The Italian Baptists are also co-founders of the Federazione delle Chiese evangeliche in Italia (Federation of Italian Protestant Churches).

In 2009 there were 116 Baptist local congregations in Italy with around 7200 baptized members, who were looked after by 43 full-time clergy.

literature

  • Albert W. Wardin, Jr .: Baptists around the world , Deland / Florida 1995 PDF document, available online ; Accessed June 7, 2010
  • Ian M. Randall: Communities of Conviction. Baptist Beginnings in Europe , Schwarzenfeld 2009, ISBN 978-3-937896-78-6 , pp. 159–169 ( The Gospel in its Beauty and Simplicity: Baptists in Italy, Spain and Portugal )

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ www.ucebi.it/i-battisti/le-radici-in-italia.html accessed on June 18, 2017.
  2. ↑ Laura Ronchi De Michelis: "Una pagina dell'evangelismo italiano: la Scuola Teologica Battista di Roma (1901–32)" in: Ceci / Demofonti (ed.): Chiesa, laicità e vita civile , Rome 2005 pp. 247-262
  3. ^ Homepage of the World Council of Churches ; Member churches  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ; Accessed June 7, 2010@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.oikoumene.org  
  4. ^ Homepage of the European Baptist Federation: Member Unions: Italy ; Accessed June 7, 2010