Reformed Episcopal Church

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The Reformed Episcopal Church is an Anglican church in the United States and Canada.

Prompted by what they saw as the loss of Protestant and evangelical witness in the Protestant Episcopal Church, the Reformed Episcopal Church, a Christian denomination, was founded on December 2, 1873 by the Rt. Rev. Bishop George David Cummins D.D. and other former Protestant Episcopal clergy and laity. Bishop Cummins had previously served as Assistant Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Kentucky.

Bishop G.D. Cummins

The REC utilizes its own Book of Common Prayer based upon the Church of England's 1662 Book of Common Prayer, along with elements of the 1928 American Book of Common Prayer. The doctrinal standards of the Reformed Episcopal Church are the Anglican Thirty-Nine Articles as understood through the Declaration of Principles approved by the Church at its founding:

[edit] Declaration of Principles

The Reformed Episcopal Church, holding "the faith once delivered unto the saints", declares its belief in the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as the Word of God, as the sole rule of Faith and Practice; in the Creed "commonly called the Apostles' Creed;" in the Divine institution of the Sacraments of Baptism and the Lord's Supper; and in the doctrines of grace substantially as they are set forth in the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion.
This Church recognizes and adheres to Episcopacy, not as of Divine right, but as a very ancient and desirable form of Church polity.
This Church, retaining a liturgy which shall not be imperative or repressive of freedom in prayer, accepts The Book of Common Prayer, as it was revised, proposed, and recommended for use by the General Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church, A.D. 1785, reserving full liberty to alter, abridge, enlarge, and amend the same, as may seem most conducive to the edification of the people, "provided that the substance of the faith be kept entire."
This Church condemns and rejects the following erroneous and strange doctrines as contrary to God's Word: First, that the Church of Christ exists only in one order or form of ecclesiastical polity; Second, that Christian Ministers are "priests" in another sense than that in which all believers are a "royal priesthood"; Third, that the Lord's Table is an altar on which the oblation of the Body and Blood of Christ is offered anew to the Father; Fourth, that the Presence of Christ in the Lord's Supper is a presence in the elements of Bread and Wine; Fifth, that regeneration is inseparably connected with Baptism.

[edit] The Reformed Episcopal Church today

To date the Reformed Episcopal Church has over 100 parishes in the United States and Canada, as well as members in Germany, Brazil and Liberia. Membership currently numbers approximately 13,000.

The church operates three seminaries: the Reformed Episcopal Seminary in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania; Cummins Theological Seminary in Summerville, South Carolina; and Cranmer Theological House in Houston, Texas. The REC does not ordain women as bishops, presbyters, or deacons. In 2002, the denomination approved a canon that provides for the setting apart (not ordination) of qualified women as deaconesses. They, however, are not considered to be female deacons as in some other Protestant churches.

The Reformed Episcopal church is in full communion with the Free Church of England and also the Anglican Province of America, with whom it is currently discussing a merger. It is in Common Cause Partnership with the Anglican Communion Network and on November 12, 2005 it and the Anglican Province of America signed a Covenant of Concordat with the Church of Nigeria. The Most Rev. Leonard W. Riches is the current Presiding Bishop of the Reformed Episcopal Church.