Bishops in an Unbroken Line Back to the Apostles

The historic episcopate is the claim that a church's bishops stand in an unbroken, traceable line of ordination reaching back to the apostles of Jesus, each bishop having been consecrated by other bishops themselves validly consecrated in the same chain, all the way back to the apostolic generation. Episcopacy itself, church government organized around the three offices of bishop, priest and deacon, became established in the main centers of Christianity by the second century, and the idea that a bishop's authority depends on standing in this kind of traceable succession from the apostles developed alongside it as a way of anchoring a bishop's teaching authority in continuity with the apostles' own teaching rather than in the bishop's personal claim alone. Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Anglican churches have all maintained versions of this claim, holding that their own bishops can be traced back through this chain of consecration, while treating a church that lacks bishops standing in the historic succession, most Protestant churches that emerged from the Reformation without retaining the office of bishop, as lacking something these traditions consider a mark of full ecclesial continuity, even where they otherwise recognize such churches as genuinely Christian.