Reformed Episcopal Church

The denomination emerged out of the high church—low church controversy of the mid-nineteenth century. Assistant Bishop David Cummins of Kentucky and Charles Edward Cheney, rector of Christ Church, Chicago, were both opposed to the hight church party and especially to the doctrine of baptismal regeneration. Bishop Cummins was criticized for participating in an ecumenical communion service at the Fifth Ave. Presbyterian Church, New York, in connection with the sixth General Convention of the Evangelical Alliance. He decided to leave the Episcopal Church. On Dec. 2, 1873, Cummins met with eight clergy and twenty laymen of the Episcopal Church at the YMCA building in New York and organized the Reformed Episcopal Church. This body rejects baptismal regeneration, any sacerdotalism with the Lord’s Supper, apostolic succession in the historic episcopate, and does not participate inn the ecumenical movement.