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The Reformed Episcopal Church (REC) is an American and Canadian-based Christian denomination which is in communion with some Anglican Communion provinces throughout the world, including the Church of Nigeria and the Church of Uganda, two of the largest Anglican provinces worldwide. The REC understands itself as an Anglican church while still not being recognized by the See of Canterbury. Being in communion with parts of the Anglican Communion and not in communion with other parts, makes the REC representative of the larger worldwide tensions in the Anglican Communion, as the more conservative elements of Anglicanism, mostly represented by provinces in Africa and the conservative elements in North America, have made many moves to counteract the long-standing dominance of the Church of England, because of the perceived liberalism that the Church of England has continued to embrace and encourage throughout the Anglican Communion. The REC is a founding member of the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA). In 2009, the Reformed Episcopal Church reported 13,600 members, but within the ACNA it is a part of a denomination of approximately 112,000 members. Neither of these bodies are members of the Anglican Communion or in a formal ecclesiastical relationship with the Archbishop of Canterbury. The REC has approximately 150 parishes and missions in the United States, Canada and Cuba, being also present in Germany, Croatia, and Serbia. The current Presiding Bishop is Royal U. Grote, Jr.〔("History" ), Reformed Episcopal Church official website. Accessed: 2009.01.09.〕 The REC was founded in 1873 by Bishop George David Cummins, formerly of the Protestant Episcopal Church. The church's services were originally derived from the ''Book of Common Prayer'' which was proposed, but never adopted, by the new Protestant Episcopal Church in 1785. Its liturgy is a “key element of the REC’s distinctive position”. After a substantive liturgical revision utilizing the fifth ''Book of Common Prayer'' (1662) as its benchmark, selected congregations have adopted the REC (''Book of Common Prayer'' ). ==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.〔William Simcox Bricknell (1845) (The judgment of the bishops upon tractarian theology ), books.google.com〕 The founding of the Reformed Episcopal Church followed a 1873 controversy about ecumenical activity. In October of that year, Bishop Cummins joined with Dean Smith of Canterbury, William Augustus Muhlenberg, and some non-Anglican ministers at an ecumenical conference 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.〔Allen C. Guelzo, "A Sufficiently Republican Church: George David Cummins and the Reformed Episcopalian Church in 1873, ''The Filson Club History Quarterly'' (April 1995) at p. 127, available at http://cupola.gettysburg.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1008&context=cwfac〕 Tozer's criticism appeared in a letter published by the New York ''Tribune'' on October 6, 1873. Bishop 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 (New York), 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.〔 Bishop 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."〔''Following the Light, Bp. George David Cummins 1876'' at http://anglicanhistory.org/usa/rec/cummins/following1876.html〕 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?" 〔Alan Guelzo, "For the Union of Evangelical Christendom", p.194〕 Rather than characterize this as schism, Bishop 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."〔Alan Guelzo, ''For the Union of Evangelical Christendom'', p. 160.〕 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 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 a more Reformed theology in the Calvinistic sense. It was not until the 1970s that the Presiding Bishop, Leonard Riches, pushed for the revitalization of Anglican theology and identity in the REC. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Reformed Episcopal Church」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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