Reformed Episcopal Church
anglican church of evangelical Episcopalian heritage
The Reformed Episcopal Church (REC) is a Christian church in the Anglican tradition. The REC was founded in 1873 in New York City by George David Cummins, a former bishop of the Episcopal Church.
The REC is a founding member of the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) and its four U.S. dioceses are member dioceses of ACNA. The REC and ACNA are not members of the Anglican Communion. The REC is in communion with its sister church the Free Church of England. It is also in communion with the Church of Nigeria and the Anglican Province of America.
Due to the death of Royal U. Grote Jr. in 2016, the then vice president of the Reformed Episcopal Church, Ray Sutton, became the presiding bishop of the REC. At the 55th general council of the church in June 2017 in Dallas, Texas, Sutton was elected to be the presiding bishop and David L. Hicks, bishop ordinary of the Diocese of the North East and Mid-Atlantic, was elected as vice-president.
As of 2026, the REC reported 117 parishes and missions in the United States and two in Canada, and also has churches in Croatia, Cuba, Germany, and Serbia. The U.S. and Canadian-based dioceses reported 8,520 members at the end of 2025.
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.
“Reformed Episcopal Church” enters the record as anglican church of evangelical Episcopalian heritage. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Reformed, Episcopal and Church can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Reformed Episcopal Church” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Reformed, Episcopal and Church provides the most credible route into that argument.
Maps, plans, fabric surveys and administrative records can establish how the site’s name, extent and function changed over time. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q828393. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1873, 2016, 2017 and 2026.
Architectural summaries often privilege surviving fabric and can understate demolished phases, contested use or displaced communities. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
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Three-step research path
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Reformed Episcopal Church” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.