History of Our Denomination

On November 10, 1873 the Assistant Bishop of Kentucky of the Protestant Episcopal Church wrote his letter of resignation to the Rt. Rev. Benjamin Bosworth Smith, D.D., Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Kentucky.

"Under a solemn sense of duty and in the fear of God, I have to tell you that I am about to retire from the work in which I have been engaged in the last seven years in the Diocese of Kentucky, and thus to sever the relations which have existed so happily and harmoniously between us during the time... I, therefore, leave the communion in which I have labored in the sacred ministry for over twenty-eight years, and transfer my work and office to another sphere of labor. I have an earnest hope and confidence that a basis for the union of all evangelical Christendom can be found in the doctrine of Justification by faith. To this blessed work I devote the remaining years of my life, content, if I can only see the dawn of that blessed day of the Lord. I am, dear Bishop, faithfully yours in Christ.

-- George David Cummins

Less than five days later, Bishop Cummins circulated a notice to "others of like mind and persuasion."

Dear Brother, The Lord has put into the hearts of some of His servants who are, or have been, in the Protestant Episcopal Church, the purpose of restoring the old paths of their fathers. On Tuesday, the second day of December, 1873, a meeting will be held in Association Hall, corner of Twenty-third Street and Fourth Avenue, in the City of New York, at ten o'clock a.m. to organize an Episcopal Church on the basis of the Prayer Book of 1785: a basis broad enough to embrace all who hold 'the faith once delivered to the saints', as that faith is maintained by the Reformed Churches of Christendom. This meeting you are cordially and affectionately invited to attend. The purpose of this meeting is to organize, and not to discuss the expediency of organizing. May the Lord guide you and us by His Holy Spirit...' George David Cummins.

When the appointed day arrived, the Reformed Episcopal Church came into being. Bishop Cummins then addressed the group.

"One in heart, in spirit, and in faith with our fathers, who at the very beginning of the existence of this nation sought to mold and fashion the ecclesiastical polity which they had inherited from the Reformed Church of England by a judicious and thorough revision of the Book of Common Prayer, we return to their position and claim to be the old and true Protestant Episcopalians of the days immediately following the American Revolution, and through these, our ancestors, we claim an unbroken historical connection through the Church of England, with the Church of Christ, from the earliest Christian era.' (1)

The choice of the name Reformed Episcopal Church clearly demonstrates that our founders did not consider themselves as revolutionaries who were intent on overthrowing the work of the past. Instead, they saw themselves as reformers, intent on removing the corruption of the present while holding fast to the purity of the Church in prior ages. Professor D.O. Kellogg explained in 1893.

Anglicanism, the parent of the Protestant Episcopal Church, not only stamped hereditary marks on her offspring but has been imitated in all her mutations. A glance at the history of the Church of England is pertinent therefore to that of the Reformed Episcopal Church, which is only reformed incidentally, for in gist and core it is a restoration, and shall have been called the Restored Episcopal Church. If its true relation to the organization from which it was cloven is to indicated in its name. It took and strives to maintain the original position of the Church of England, when it became Protestant, and of the Protestant Episcopal Church of Bishop White's time. We have called it the reformed, but it is the Restored Episcopal Church. (2)

Like the English Protestant Reformers of the Sixteenth century, Bishop Cummins "sought to prove that a national Church could indeed reform itself around the Protestant principles of sola scriptura and sola fide without sloughing off fifteen centuries of the Church's history. (3)

Like Richard Hooker, early Reformed Episcopalians would have been quick to urge:

"Let us be loath to change, without urgent necessity, the ancient ordinances, rites, and long approved customs of our venerable predecessors. .. antiquity, custom and consent in the Church of God, making with that which the law doth establish are themselves sufficient reasons to uphold the same, unless some notable public inconvenience enforce the contrary... We neither follow Rome in her errors nor reject what is sound simply because it is hers. Not everything that idolaters have done is to be abhorred, but what they have done idolatrously. For of that which is good even in evil things, God is the author.' (4)

This fundamental conservatism is revealed in comments made by Bishop Cummins in response to his critics:

"We only want to take out all that can be interpreted as teaching false doctrine; the rest should remain as it is. The fewer changes we make the better; ours is an Episcopal Church, and we do not wish to do away with our offices and liturgy". (5)

It was with this intention and in this spirit that the Reformed Episcopal Church was founded. At that founding, Bishop Cummins presented the Declaration of Principles of the Reformed Episcopal Church for adoption.

It has been claimed by critics that the Declaration of Principles are an additional authority to the Holy Scriptures and the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion . This is not true.

First, the opening principle clearly recognizes Scripture as a primary authoritative document, but not exclusively so. Holy Scripture was not given in a vacuum apart from the Church, and thus, the ancient creeds as interpreted by their English commentary, the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, are also authoritative.

Second, the statement on the episcopacy is straight out of Richard Hooker, the late 16th Century Anglican theologian, who wrote the classical defense of Anglicanism, The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity . Hooker endorsed episcopal polity as rooted in Scripture and as historically verified by its universal, uncontested acceptance for the first 1500 years of church history. Nevertheless, this classical Anglican resisted being so exclusive as to unchurch those who did not have bishops (his European Reformed brethren) by denying the validity of their Baptism or Communion. Those who came later in the 19th Century decided to depart from the English Reformation of Hooker and reject the Holy Communion of nonepiscopal protestant denominations. As such the second principle embraces the episcopacy for the well-being but not the being of the church.

Third, the Prayer Book of the REC is the 1785 American version of the 1662 BCP. Due to the allowance for revision, the 1928 and the Australian BCP are permitted for use as long as the Declaration of Principles are placed in the front of the Prayer Book.

Lastly, the denials of the 4th Principle clearly oppose any language defined to imply that the sacraments in and of themselves convey salvation apart from faith. However, a negative does not establish a positive. Particular terms such as priest, altar , and real presence are not actually forbidden, only their incorrect use. Specifically, these denials should in no way be understood as rejecting the clear language of documents subscribed to in the Declaration of Principles (The Scriptures, Book of Common Prayer, Thirty-Nine Articles, etc.)

1 The Articles allow the use of the word priest as the anglicized version of the word presbyter by their consistent use of it to describe a minister of the Word and Sacrament (XXXII, XXXVI), and not as someone who can uniquely provide atonement (XXXI) is clear.

2 Table and altar are used interchangeably in Holy Scripture (Malachi 1:10, 12), suggesting the table of Holy Communion is an altar of praise and thanksgiving .

3 The Articles affirm belief in the real presence of Christ when they say, The Body of Christ is given, taken, and eaten, in the Supper, only after an heavenly and spiritual manner (XXVIII).

4 The Holy Scriptures (Titus 3:5) and the Catechism of the BCP speak of baptism as an outward sign of an inward grace such that regeneration should be understood as normally occurring at Holy Baptism, but not inseparable with Baptism.

Thus, the Declaration of Principles are not an attempt to depart from historic Anglican beliefs. Rather, they are an expression of a return to the old paths of the Protestant Episcopal Church and our English Reformers , in the words of Bishop Cummins. Moreover, their rejection of peculiar medieval errors that have sometimes reappeared in the history of Anglicanism has held Reformed Episcopalians to orthodoxy for 123 years without a single occurrence of schism or doctrinal deviation.

1 Annie Price, A History of the Formation and Growth of the Reformed Episcopal Church .
2 Professor D.O. Kellogg The Reformed Episcopalian , March 1990, pp 6-11.
3 The Rev. Dr. Allen Guelzo, The First Thirty Years (Reformed Episcopal Publication Society), p 3.
4 Richard Hooker, Ecclesiastical Polity , Book II, p 32 ff.
5 Annie Price, A History of the Formation and Growth of the Reformed Episcopal Church p 127.