Saturday, November 26, 2016

REC Presiding Bishop Royal Grote, Jr. Dead at the Age of 70


The Presiding Bishop of the Reformed Episcopal Church, the Rt. Rev.  Royal Grote, Jr., died in his sleep in the early hours of the morning on Thanksgiving Day. He was 70 years of age. He had reportedly been in ill health for a number of years.

Presiding Bishop Grote was elected to the office of President of the Reformed Episcopal Church in 2014. He had previously served as the Assistant Bishop of the Diocese of the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, Missionary Bishop of the Special Jurisdiction of North America, and Bishop Ordinary of the Diocese of Mid-America. He was for several years a lecturer at Reformed Episcopal Seminary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and the chancellor of Cranmer House in Houston, Texas, where he was also a lecturer on dogmatic theology.

Presiding Bishop Grote was one of a new generation of leaders in the Reformed Episcopal Church, who sought to steer that denomination away from the Evangelical Protestant principles of its founders into what they viewed as “the mainstream of Anglicanism.” As a result the Reformed Episcopal Church has become more Anglo-Catholic in its doctrine and practices.

The Rt. Rev. Ray R. Sutton, Vice-President of the Reformed Episcopal Church and Bishop Coadjutor of the Diocese of Mid-America, will assume the responsibilities of President of the Reformed Episcopal Church and Bishop Ordinary of the Diocese of Mid-America.

The Reformed Episcopal Church was established in 1873 by the Rt. Rev. George David Cummins, Assistant Bishop of Kentucky, and a group of conservative Evangelical Episcopalian clergy and laymen who had become disaffected from the Protestant Episcopal Church over the spread and growing influence of Anglo-Catholicism in that denomination. Branches of the Reformed Episcopal Church were subsequently established in Canada, the United Kingdom, and Germany.

Following World War II the Reformed Episcopal Church sought a reconciliation with the Protestant Episcopal Church. Due to the increasing liberal direction of the Episcopal Church, this effort was abandoned. In the early twenty-first century the Reformed Episcopal Church entered into merger talks with the Anglican Province of America, a Anglo-Catholic Continuing Anglican jurisdiction. In 2009 the Reformed Episcopal Church became a founding entity and sub-province of the second Anglican Church in North America. 

2 comments:

Pastor Roy said...

The REC was founded in New York City at the YMCA in Manhattan, I believe, on the 2nd of December 1873 not 75. Rt.Rev.G.D.Cummings and several low church PEC clergy joined him in starting the REC. The next serious attempt at breaking away from the PECUSA was in 1963 by James Parker Dees, later made bishop. Bp Dees would lead the AOC for the next almost 20 years.
I was with the REC from 1981 to 2011 when I transferred by orders to the AOC and was accepted by Presiding Bp Jerry Ogles. I am now the diocesan bishop for the Diocese of the Epiphany which includes most of central United States.
Rt Rev. Roy Morales-Kuhn

Robin G. Jordan said...

I corrected the date. 1875 is the year in which it adopted a revised Prayer Book. 1875 did not seem quite right to me at the time that I posted the announcement of Bishop Grote's passing. However, I am busy with school and I did not take the time to check it. Right now I am posting Anglicans Ablaze in what little free time available to me.

Both the REC and the AOC from what I gather are not considered Continuing Anglican Churches as they predate the Continuing Anglican Movement of the 1970s.

I was until this past summer sojourning with a nondenominational church, which began attending when it was a church plant as I wanted to learn more about church planting, evangelism, and small group ministry. The church is no longer a plant, having been existence for 10 years this past September. I have been living here in western Kentucky for about 9 years. Over the summer I became involved in worship and preaching ministry at a local EMC church. The EMC church needs someone with my gift mix, skills,and experience.