The Evangelical Presbyterian Church (EPC) is an American church body holding to presbyterian governance and Reformed theology. 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 motto of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church is "In Essentials, Unity. In Non-Essentials, Liberty. In All Things, Charity; Truth In Love." The Office of the General Assembly is in Orlando, Florida. History The EPC began as a result of prayer meetings in 1980 and 1981 by pastors and elders increasingly alienated by liberalism in the "northern" branch of Presbyterianism (the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., a predecessor of the Presbyterian Church (USA)). Two cases served as important catalysts in their separation: the Kenyon Case of 1975 and the Kaseman Case of 1981. Wynn Kenyon was a seminary graduate who in good conscience declared that he would refuse to participate in the ordination of a woman, although he affirmed that he would willingly serve in a pastorate with ordained women on the staff. Though he had been ordained by the Pittsburgh Presbytery, in 1975 the Permanent Judicial Commission of the UPCUSA General Assembly overturned Kenyon's ordination because accepting women's ordination was "an explicit constitutional provision." Mansfield Kaseman, meanwhile was ordained as a minister by National Capital Union Presbytery in 1979 and accused of denying four traditional attributes of Christ: his deity, sinlessness, vicarious atonement, and bodily resurrection. By 1981, his case had worked its way to the Permanent Judicial Commission of the UPCUSA, which affirmed his ordination. In contrast with the UPCUSA, the EPC permitted differing views on women's ordination and emphasized traditional teachings on the nature of Jesus Christ. The first general assembly of the church met at Ward Presbyterian Church in Livonia, Michigan in late 1981, drafting a list of essential beliefs. This list was intentionally short in order to help preserve the unity of the church around the essentials of the faith in theology, church government, and evangelism. At its foundation, the EPC adopted a list of essential beliefs, "The Essentials of Our Faith," to state what the EPC views as the sine qua non of Evangelical Christianity (see below), in part to seek to guarantee that it would not succumb to the theological problems that had plagued its parent denominations during the