FREE CHURCH FEDERATION. See FEDERAL COUN CIL OF EVANGELICAL FREE CHURCHES; REUNION (CHURCH). FREE CHURCH OF ENGLAND, a Protestant episcopal church "essentially one with the established church of England, but free to go into any parish, to use a revised edition of the Book of Common Prayer, to associate the laity with the clergy in the government and work of the church, and to hold communion with Christians of other denominations." It was founded in 1844 in opposition to the Tractarian movement, and embodies the dis tinctively evangelical elements of the Reformation, especially in its opposition to ritualism.
See G. H. Jones, article "Reformed Episcopal Church and Free Church of England," in Hastings' Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics vol. x. with references there given.