George David Cummins

George David Cummins (1822-1876) was an American bishop and founder of the Reformed Episcopal Church.

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Life and career

George David Cummins was born in Delaware on 11 December 1822. He graduated from Dickinson College in 1841,[1] and entered the Methodist ministry.

In 1845 Cummins took orders in the Protestant Episcopal Church. After serving as rector of Episcopal parishes in Virginia, Washington, and Chicago, he was appointed Assistant Bishop of Kentucky in 1866.[2]

A staunch Evangelical of Reformed doctrine, Cummins opposed the influences of Ritualism and the Anglo-Catholic Oxford movement.[3] In 1873, Bishop Cummins was criticized for receiving communion with ministers outside the Protestant Episcopal Church, and resigned his position. He then founded the Reformed Episcopal Church, of which he was the first presiding bishop, in New York City.[2]

Bishop Cummins died in Lutherville, Maryland 26 June 1876.[4]

See also

References

  1. ^ Dickinson College website, "George David Cummins, Class of 1841"
  2. ^ a b "George David Cummins", in The New International Encyclopedia, 1917.
  3. ^ Annie Darling Price, A History of the Formation and Growth of the Reformed Episcopal Church (Philadelphia, J.M. Armstrong, 1902), pp. 27ff.
  4. ^ Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography, "George David Cummins".

Publications