Reformed Episcopal Church

The Reformed Episcopal Church is an Anglican Church. It was founded in 1873 in New York City by George David Cummins, a former bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church.
The REC is a founding member of the Anglican Church in North America, and its four U.S. dioceses are member dioceses of ACNA. The REC and ACNA are not members of the Anglican Communion. The REC is in communion with its sister church the Free Church of England. It is also in communion with the Church of Nigeria, and the Anglican Province of America.
Due to the death of Royal U. Grote Jr. in 2016, the then Vice President of the Reformed Episcopal Church, Ray Sutton became the Presiding Bishop of the REC. At the 55th General Council of the Reformed Episcopal Church in June 2017 in Dallas, Texas, USA, Sutton was elected to be the Presiding Bishop, and David L. Hicks, Bishop Ordinary of the Diocese of the North East and Mid-Atlantic, was elected as vice-president, of the Reformed Episcopal Church.
As of 2022, the REC reported 117 parishes and missions in the United States and two in Canada, and also has churches in Croatia, Cuba, Germany, and Serbia. The U.S. and Canadian-based dioceses reported 7,602 members at the end of 2022.

History

In the 19th century, as the Oxford Movement urged that the Protestant Episcopal Church and the Church of England return to Anglicanism's roots in pre-Reformation Catholic Christianity, George David Cummins, the Assistant Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Kentucky, became concerned about the preservation of Protestant, Evangelical, Reformed, and Confessional principles within the church.
The founding of the Reformed Episcopal Church followed an 1873 controversy about ecumenical activity. In October of that year, Cummins joined with Robert Payne Smith, Dean of Canterbury, William Augustus Muhlenberg, and some non-Anglican ministers at an ecumenical conference of the American branch of the Evangelical Alliance. During the conference, held in New York City, Cummins, Smith and the non-Episcopalian ministers presided at joint services of Holy Communion without using any version of the Book of Common Prayer. Retired missionary bishop William Tozer, who was visiting New York at the time, criticized Smith and implicitly Cummins for participating in the rite. Tozer's criticism appeared in a letter published by the New York Tribune on October 6, 1873.
Cummins defended his actions in a letter published 10 days later, but after criticisms from Anglo-Catholic clergy and others for his choice not to seek preaching permission from the bishop in whose diocese he was preaching without authorization, he submitted a letter of resignation to his own bishop on November 10. Three weeks later, joined by 21 Episcopalian clergy and lay people, Cummins organized the first general council of the Reformed Episcopal Church in New York City on December 2, 1873.
Cummins and his followers considered his action not rash decisions but simply decisive action, founded upon their long-held convictions about the growing Anglo-Catholic practices within the church. While these practices had existed from the founding of the Church of England, the Tractarian or Oxford Movement had been growing in influence, much to Cummins' dismay. He described his understanding's evolution in a letter to Bishop Cheney, stressing his earlier attempts to create reforms within the Protestant Episcopal Church. "We went before the General Conventions of 1868 and 1871 with petitions signed by hundreds of clergymen and laymen from all parts of the land, asking relief for Evangelical men. We asked but three things, the use of an alternate phrase in the baptismal office for infants, the repeal of the canon closing our pulpits against all non-Episcopal clergymen, and the insertion of a note in the Prayer-book, declaring the term "Priest" to be of equivalent meaning with the word Presbyter. We were met by an indignant and almost contemptuous refusal." These failed earlier attempts and Tozer's criticism of the ecumenical communion service Cummins thought an opportunity for decisive action.
Some in the Protestant Episcopal Church saw Cummins' decision as schismatic. Others, however, disagreed. One correspondent of the publication "The Episcopalian" said, "If we say that this new church has begun in schism, the church of Rome alleges the same things against us. The real question is, which party is guilty of the schism, the party which separates and goes out? or the party that forces the separation, by making binding on the conscience what Christ has not made binding?" Rather than characterize this as schism, Cummins and his fellow reformers portrayed themselves as providing a Protestant, Anglican identity under which there could be a 'closer union of all Evangelical Christendom.' "The Reformed Episcopal Church would be what the Protestant Episcopal Church might have become had it not been paralyzed by the Tractarian virus." The term "Reformed" was never intended to denote any Calvinistic sense of Reformed theology, but was intended to convey Cummins' purpose of an Episcopal Church that had been reformed against Catholic influences. The founders of the church would often stylise the name as The Re-Formed Episcopal Church, for disambiguation so that it was known this was the Episcopal Church Re-Formed and not of a reformed theology. Cummins was in attendance at a Convention on 21 October 1868 and was greatly disappointed by the "Catholic" practices which he witnessed: "ltars erected, with super-altars, with burning candles, and floating clouds of incense; the communion service set in a Roman framework... there is a departure from the doctrinal basis of the Reformation." Cummins' feelings grew stronger after reading an essay titled "Are There Romanising Germs in the Prayer Book?" which asserted that the Romanisation of the church and the Holy Eucharistic service was not an influence from the outside but, rather came from inside the church - it was in the Prayer Book itself, thus; Cummins started pushing stronger against the "Roman germs", which caused him to lose friends on both sides: Anglo-Catholics and Evangelicals alike.
The REC has had several periods of a general distinct theology. Although it began as a way to preserve Protestantism within the Anglican identity, the Anglican aspect of the identity began to fade over time. With its growing and heavy emphasis on ecumenical relations with other Protestants, many of those who converted or were confirmed in the REC had identities from various other Protestant backgrounds. Due to this influx and the short-lived bishopric of the founders, the typical Reformed Episcopalian went from a Protestant, Latitudinarian pathos to a more Dispensationalist persuasion in a relatively short period of time, much of this happening in the early 1900s. Over the following several decades, the REC made the transition to more Reformed theology in the Calvinistic sense. It was not until the 1990s that the Presiding Bishop, Leonard Riches, pushed for the revitalization of Anglican theology and identity in the REC, which remains the current identity today.

Early growth

In the United States

Within six months of its founding in 1873, the REC grew to about 1,500 communicants, two bishops and 15 other ministers. In 1875, over 500 African-American Protestant Episcopal communicants in South Carolina's Low Country joined the REC as a group.

In Canada

Within a year from the founding of the REC, like-minded Canadian Anglicans in New Brunswick and Ontario seceded from that Church and formed Reformed Episcopal congregations. In October 1874, Edward Cridge, dean of the Anglican cathedral in Victoria, British Columbia, withdrew with about 350 of his congregation to form the Church of Our Lord
and join the Reformed Episcopal Church. Cridge was consecrated a bishop for the REC in 1876. Many of the Canadian Reformed Episcopal Churches joined the United Church at its founding. The Reformed Episcopal Church now has three churches in Canada, two in British Columbia and one in Ontario. St. George's Church, Hamilton is affiliated with the Diocese of the Northeast in the US, and both Holy Trinity Church in Colwood and Living Word in Courtenay are a part of the Diocese of Western Canada and Alaska.

In England

In 1877, in response to a petition from REC sympathizers in England, the REC's Fifth General Council acted to establish the Reformed Episcopal Church in that country. Former Church of England minister Thomas Huband Gregg was consecrated a bishop to lead adherents there. By 1910 there were 28 ministers and 1,990 communicant members constituting the Reformed Episcopal Church in that country. In 1927, the Reformed Episcopal Church in England merged with the Free Church of England with which the REC remains in full communion.

Developments since 2000

Eastern Canada diocese merged

In 2009, Bishop Michael Fedechko retired as ordinary of the Diocese of Central and Eastern Canada, and the diocese's parishes came under the supervision of the Diocese of the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic. Bishop Fedechko subsequently became affiliated with the Independent Anglican Church Canada Synod.

Revised Book of Common Prayer

Revised editions of the REC Book of Common Prayer were issued in 2003 and 2005.

Current status

The Reformed Episcopal Church reported that it had 13,600 members in 2009. In 2016, total membership had fallen to 6,927. In 2022, the church reported a total membership of 7,602, a 9.7% increase from six years prior.

Dioceses

United States

The Reformed Episcopal Church was originally divided into four synods. The synods were renamed dioceses in 1984. As of 2016, there are four U.S. dioceses with 108 parishes and missions:

Diocese	Territory	Cathedral	See City	Bishop	Founded	Number of Congregations	Membership	Average Sunday Attendance
Central States	Alabama, Indiana, Kentucky, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia	-	Mason, Ohio	Peter Manto	2008	20	1295	812
Mid-America	All U.S. states west of the Mississippi River; Illinois, Michigan, Mississippi, and Wisconsin; all Canadian provinces and territories west of Manitoba.	Cathedral Church of the Holy Communion	Dallas	Ordinary: Ray R. Sutton Suffragans: Walter Banek, Charlie Camlin	1996	41	2,504	1,769
Northeast and Mid-Atlantic	All U.S. states north and east of and including Maryland and Pennsylvania; all Canadian provinces and territories east of Saskatchewan	-	Philadelphia	William A. Jenkins Sr.	1984	25	1,493	825
Southeast	Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, District of Columbia	-	Summerville, South Carolina	Willie J. Hill Jr.	1984	33	2,310	1,347

From 2008 to 2016 an additional U.S. Diocese of the West existed. It had been formed as a Missionary Diocese from the Diocese of Mid-America and attained full diocesan status when churches from the Anglican Province of America joined the REC in 2008, led by Winfield Mott. In April 2016, the diocesan synod voted to dissolve the diocese due to its small size and merge with ACNA's Missionary Diocese of All Saints. The Diocese of Western Canada and Alaska, created in 1996, had two parishes in British Columbia, led by Charles Dorrington, and also included the Missionary District of Cuba. Due to his small size, the diocese was extinct and incorporated in the Diocese of Mid-America as the Convocation of the West and Western Canada, of which Charles Dorrington is an Assisting Bishop.