Name Charles Stevens | ||
Charles Isaac Stevens (1835–1917) was the second patriarch of the Ancient British Church from 1889 to 1917 and also was primus of the Free Protestant Episcopal Church of England from 1900 to 1917.
He was born on 28 November 1835 at Clerkenwell, London, to Isaac Thomas and Anna (née Morgan) Stevens and was baptised at the Parish Church of St Luke, London, on 5 June 1836. Stevens was a Reformed Episcopal Church of England presbyter until the year 1879.
He was consecrated on 6 March 1879 by Richard Williams Morgan, of the Ancient British Church. He took the religious name Mar Theophilus I.
According to the Anglican Free Communion, Order of Corporate Reunion (OCR) bishops assisted Morgan at the 6 March 1879 consecration. This is disputed, however, by Henry Brandreth who (writing in 1947) considered that "it is very unlikely, however, that any of the OCR bishops performed a consecration" of Stevens.
On 4 May 1890, Stevens ordained Leon Chechemian (Mar Leon), bishop of the joint Free Protestant Church of England/United Armenian Catholic Church in the British Isles, as the Ancient British Church's archbishop of Selsey. On 2 November 1897, Chechemian, Stevens, and other bishops, founded the Free Protestant Episcopal Church with Chechemian as primus. Chechemian resigned as primus in 1900 and Stevens succeeded him in that office. In 1881 Stevens married Eliza Elizabeth Galloway at Islington, London. She died in 1900 in the Hackney district of London, where the Stevens had lived for many years and where the pro-cathedral of the Ancient British Church/Free Protestant Episcopal Church was located. Stevens died on 2 February 1917 in London.
Stevens was an organist and the author of An Essay on the Theory of Music (Gottengen 1863).