Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant passages that answer the question.
Query: Where is the Reformed Episcopal Church located?
The Theological Seminary of the Reformed Episcopal Church, otherwise known as Reformed Episcopal Seminary, is the largest and oldest of the seminaries of the Reformed Episcopal Church and is accredited by the Association of Theological Schools. It began offering classes in 1886 in West Philadelphia and was chartered in 1887. Now located in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania, it offers Master of Divinity (MDiv), a Certificate in Bible and Theology, and a Licentiate in Diaconal or Deaconess Ministry.
The Reformed Ecumenical Council (REC) was an international organization of Calvinist 
Churches. It had 39 member denominations from 25 countries in its membership, and those churches have about 12 million people together. It was founded August 14, 1946 in Grand Rapids, Michigan as the Reformed Ecumenical Synod. The Reformed Ecumenical Council was the second largest international Reformed alliance and the more conservative of the two largest. In 1953, The Reformed Ecumenical Synod meeting in Edinburgh decided to advise its member churches not to join the World Council of Churches as currently constituted because it “permits essentially different interpretations of its doctrinal basis, and thus the nature of the Christian faith” and “represents itself as a Community of faith, but is actually not this” due to member churches holding “basically divergent positions.”
About two-thirds of REC member churches also belonged to the larger World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC). The seat of the Reformed Ecumenical Council was Grand Rapids, Michigan, United States.
The Reformed Episcopal Church was originally divided into four synods. The synods were renamed dioceses in 1984. As of 2016, there are four U.S. dioceses with 108 parishes and missions:From 2008 to 2016 an additional U.S. Diocese of the West existed. It had been formed as a Missionary Diocese from the Diocese of Mid-America and attained full diocesan status when churches from the Anglican Province of America joined the REC in 2008, led by Winfield Mott. In April 2016, the diocesan synod voted to dissolve the diocese due to its small size and merge with ACNA's Missionary Diocese of All Saints.
The Diocese of Western Canada and Alaska, created in 1996, had two parishes in British Columbia, led by Charles Dorrington, and also included the Missionary District of Cuba. Due to his small size, the diocese was extinct and incorporated in the Diocese of Mid-America as the Convocation of the West and Western Canada, of which Charles Dorrington is an Assisting Bishop.In 2009, the REC became a founding member of the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA), a denomination seeking to create a new Anglican Communion province distinct from the Episcopal Church. ACNA is in communion with the Anglican Churches of Uganda, Nigeria and Sudan, with approximately 30 million members worldwide, representing approximately one-third of the faithful of the Anglican Communion.
Cummins Memorial Theological Seminary, located in Summerville, South Carolina, near Charleston, is named for Bishop George Cummins, the founder of the Reformed Episcopal Church. The seminary which is conservative, evangelical, biblical and Anglican was founded in the later part of the nineteenth century as a rogative college, meaning it was located wherever the Bishop of the Southeast took up residence. Colonel Stevens from the Citadel was the first bishop. The founding bishop was Bishop David Cummins. In 1912, the Diocese of the Southeast purchased property for a permanent campus. Its motto is to "enter to learn and depart to serve". Its purpose is to equip generations of Church leaders for excellence in ministry and service with the theological foundation and skills to meet the spiritual, emotional and physical needs of communities through the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
The founding of the Reformed Episcopal Church followed an 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 for the United States of America. 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. Tozer's criticism appeared in a letter published by the New York "Tribune" on October 6, 1873.
The Diocese of the Southeast is a Reformed Episcopal Church diocese and as such an Anglican Church in North America founding diocese. The diocese comprises 32 parishes, 30 in South Carolina and 2 in Georgia, in the United States. Its headquarters are located in Summerville, South Carolina. The current Bishop Ordinary is Alphonza Gadsden and the Bishop Suffragan was William White, who become Bishop Coadjutor on 10 January 2014.
After the English Reformation, Roman Catholic worship was illegal in England for nearly 250 years until 1791, and it grew slowly thereafter in comparison to West Sussex, where many large estates were owned by gentry who secretly kept the faith over many generations. Ill-feeling towards Catholics apparently persisted well into the 19th century in Battle, where the 1886 Church of Our Lady Immaculate and St Michael was set well back from the street (in the garden of its presbytery) and does not have an ecclesiastical appearance. In the early 20th century, bolder architectural statements were made with the Gothic Revival church at Bexhill-on-Sea and the elaborate Italian Romanesque-style church at Rye, both of which are listed buildings. Most of the other Roman Catholic churches in Rother district are simple mid-20th-century buildings, sometimes with distinguishing architectural features such as a modernistic portico-style entrance at Sidley, dalle de verre glass at Burwash and a Mediterranean-style blank-arcaded tower at Little Common.
Much of the early growth of the Diocese of Tennessee occurred in plantation regions, mainly centered in the hilly, fertile tobacco-growing region south of Nashville and in the cotton-producing lands of the Mississippi River region in southwestern Tennessee, the church being imported by Anglican loyalists from Virginia and North Carolina. It was not until after the American Civil War that the Episcopal church penetrated much of East Tennessee, and well into the 20th century before many other towns elsewhere in the state got their own churches. The University of the South, located on the Cumberland Plateau in Sewanee, Tennessee, however, helped the fledgling diocese in matters of clergy development. As with much of American Protestantism during the period after World War II, the Episcopal Church flourished in newly-developing suburban areas, a large number of the new churches being missions founded by long-established in-town parishes.
Arising in Wolfstein about the middle of the 16th century, under the pledge-lords Schwickard von Sickingen's (1549-1562) and Georg Johannes I's (Palatinate-Veldenz, 1543-1592) influence, were a Reformed community and a Lutheran one alongside each other. The former belonged (along with Kreimbach, Rothselberg and Rutsweiler) to the parish of Zweikirchen with the chapel of ease on Wassergasse while the latter, to avoid disputes with the former, established its own chapel in Wolfstein. The clergyman's seat changed between Wolfstein, Roßbach and Eßweiler. This chapel was, on the occasion of the union of the Reformed and Lutheran faiths, sold in 1818, and the proceeds were used to build a rectory ("Haus Adam", 1822).
In the words of Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, confessional evangelicalism refers to "that movement of Christian believers who seek a constant convictional continuity with the theological formulas of the Protestant Reformation". While approving of the evangelical distinctions proposed by Bebbington, confessional evangelicals believe that authentic evangelicalism requires more concrete definition in order to protect the movement from theological liberalism and from heresy. According to confessional evangelicals, subscription to the ecumenical creeds and to the Reformation-era confessions of faith (such as the confessions of the Reformed churches) provides such protection. Confessional evangelicals are represented by conservative Presbyterian churches (emphasizing the Westminster Confession), certain Baptist churches that emphasize historic Baptist confessions such as the Second London Confession, evangelical Anglicans who emphasize the Thirty-Nine Articles (such as in the Anglican Diocese of Sydney, Australia), and some confessional Lutherans with pietistic convictions.
Ray R. Sutton is the current Presiding Bishop. This church continues apostolic succession through George D. Cummins who left the Episcopal Church, USA in the 19th century.
Cummins Memorial Church is an historic Reformed Episcopal Church building located at 1210 West Lanvale Street in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. It is a Gothic Revival-style church executed in granite ashlar. It features a high-pitched gable roof; a short, two-staged tower with a slate-shingled, hexagonal roof; and a large stained glass, lancet window with wood tracery. It was erected in 1878 for the Cummins Memorial Reformed Episcopal Church, a memorial to George David Cummins (1822-1876), and originally named Church of the Rock of Ages. The building is now Emmanuel Christian Community Church.
The Church Group is on ground rising from near Newcastle Street (New England Highway) up to St. Peter's Church which stands on the commanding eminence of Stockade Hill, East Maitland. It is thus situated at the western end of William Street, the principal axis of colonial East Maitland. This broad avenue still connects St Peter's visually and spatially to the Maitland Courthouse and the Maitland Gaol at the eastern end, providing a powerful reminder of the interplay between church and state in colonial NSW. The site, which has a double street frontage to Banks Street and William Street, slopes away to the north-west.
Roman Catholic worship in the area has had an unbroken history since before the English Reformation, despite being outlawed for centuries by various Acts of Parliament. Rich families such as the Wappingthorns at Steyning and the Carylls at West Grinstead maintained the faith, sometimes using secret rooms to celebrate Mass. Example survives in the Priest's House next to the 19th-century Church of Our Lady of Consolation and St Francis in West Grinstead, and possibly at Henfield. Mass was sometimes said in private houses (as at Henfield) before permanent churches were built, and three of the district's present Roman Catholic churches are linked to monasteries and convents. Public worship takes place in the chapels at St Hugh's Charterhouse Monastery at Parkminster and The Towers Convent in Upper Beeding, and the Priory Church of Our Lady of England in Storrington is physically linked to the Premonstratensian monastery there.
At the local level, there are 6,447 Episcopal congregations, each of which elects a vestry or bishop's committee. Subject to the approval of its diocesan bishop, the vestry of each parish elects a priest, called the rector, who has spiritual jurisdiction in the parish and selects assistant clergy, both deacons and priests. (There is a difference between vestry and clergy elections – clergy are ordained members usually selected from outside the parish, whereas any member in good standing of a parish is eligible to serve on the vestry.) The diocesan bishop, however, appoints the clergy for all missions and may choose to do so for non-self-supporting parishes.
After the ecclesiastical merger, the Protestant parish seat was moved from Zweikirchen to Wolfstein in 1823. Wolfstein thereby became the mother-church centre while Zweikirchen and Rutsweiler became branches. Roßbach belonged until 1844 to the parish of Einöllen, when it passed to Wolfstein. Between 1866 and 1868, the Evangelical church, which still stands now, was built. Today, the Protestant parish of Wolfstein comprises the mother-church centre of Wolfstein along with the Reckweilerhof and the branches of Rutsweiler an der Lauter with Selbachmühle and Oberweiler-Tiefenbach.
Saint Joseph Catholic Community is still an active parish in Palm Bay. Its main church building is located at 5530 Babcock Street, Northeast]. The Miller Street Church continues in use the chapel for the cemetery, which is still active.
Roman Catholic worship was outlawed for centuries after the English Reformation, but from the mid-19th century it experienced "a striking growth ... in and around Arundel", helped by the construction of the lavish Church of Our Lady and St Philip Howard in 1869–73. This became Arundel Cathedral in 1965 when the Roman Catholic Diocese of Arundel and Brighton was created, and is the administrative centre of that region. The staunchly Catholic Dukes of Norfolk, whose seat is at Arundel Castle, were influential in Catholicism's development in Arundel and the rest of England for many years. An Anglican vicar of the 1860s said there were more Roman Catholics than Anglicans in the parish of Arundel, and about 750 lived in the area in 1973. Elsewhere in the district, Roman Catholic worship has taken place at Slindon since the late 18th century, and the present church dates from 1865; a late-19th-century priest at Arundel founded churches at Angmering, Houghton (both now closed) and Littlehampton; and Rustington and East Preston gained churches in the 20th century. Monks of the Servite Order founded Bognor Regis's Church of Our Lady of Sorrows in 1881.
Evangelical Friends regard Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Saviour, and have similar religious beliefs to other evangelical Christians. They believe in, and hold a high regard for, the penal substitution of the atonement of Christ on the Cross at Calvary, biblical infallibility, and the need for every person to personally experience a relationship with God. They believe that the purpose of the Evangelical Friends Church is to evangelise the unsaved people of the world, to spiritually transform them through God's love and through social service to others. Evangelical Friends regard the Bible as the infallible and self-authenticating Word of God. The statement of faith of Evangelical Friends International is comparable to the statement of faith of other Evangelical churches. Evangelical Friends who are members of Evangelical Friends International are mainly located in the U.S., Central America, and Asia. Beginning in the 1880s, some Friends began using outward sacraments in their Sunday services, first in Evangelical Friends Church–Eastern Region (then known as Ohio Yearly Meeting [Damascus]). Friends Church–Southwest Region has also approved the practice of using the outward sacraments in their Sunday services. In places where Evangelical Friends are engaged in missionary work, such as in Africa, Latin America, and Asia, adult baptism by immersion in water is carried out. This practice differs from most other Quaker branches of the Religious Society of Friends. , EFCI claims to represent more than 140,000 Friends, roughly 39% of the total number of Friends worldwide.
Germantown Baptist Church dates back to 1838 in Germantown, Tennessee and is a large Southern Baptist church, formerly categorized as a megachurch. The church is 179 years old, and since its founding has moved from its location in downtown Germantown to an over building complex on a campus near the border of Germantown and Collierville on Poplar Avenue. As of October 2009, the church has an average Sunday worship attendance of 2,064 and an annual budget of $7,564,896. The original building for the church still stands on Germantown Road. Built twenty-one years before the beginning of the Civil War, Germantown Baptist Church is the second oldest church in the city of Germantown.
St Peter's Anglican Church and Glebe Cemetery are a heritage-listed Anglican church and closed cemetery in East Maitland, New South Wales. The church is at 47 William Street while the cemetery is approximetely away, approximately beyond the end of George St, also in East Maitland. The church was designed by Cyril and Arthur Blacket (Blacket Brothers) and built from 1884 to 1886. The cemetery is also known as Glebe Gully Burial Ground and Glebe Paddock. It was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 31 August 2012.
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?" 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." 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 [it should be noted that the founders of the church would often stylise the name as The Re-Formed Episcopal Church, for disambiguation so that it was known this was the Episcopal Church Re-Formed and not of a reformed theology]. Bishop Cummins was in attendance at a Convention on 21 October 1868 and was greatly disappointed by the "Catholic" practices which he witnessed: "[a]ltars erected, with super-altars, with burning candles, and floating clouds of incense; the communion service set in a Roman framework ... there is a departure from the doctrinal basis of the Reformation." Cummins' feelings grew stronger after reading an essay titled "Are There Romanising Germs in the Prayer Book?" which asserted that the Romanisation of the church and the Holy Eucharistic service was not an influence from the outside but, rather came from inside the church - it was in the Prayer Book itself, thus; Cummins started pushing stronger against the "Roman germs" which sadly, caused him to lose friends on both sides: Anglo-Catholics and Evangelicals alike.
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.
REC ministers, unlike ministers of the Protestant Episcopal Church, exchanged pulpits with evangelical ministers of non-episcopal traditions. They viewed the ministries of the word and sacraments in other evangelical denominations as equally valid. True churches of Christ existed outside episcopal church structures, they held, contrary to Tractarian and High Church teaching. Inter-evangelical collegiality was an important issue for the REC, because Bishop Cummins had been censured for participation with Presbyterian and Methodist ministers in an inter-church communion service. This practice of the founders' praxis and belief has now been abandoned. The current praxis is to require reordination and regularization of orders if ordained outside episcopal ordination.
Due to the death of Royal U. Grote Jr., the then current Vice President of the Reformed Episcopal Church, Ray Sutton became the Presiding Bishop of the REC. At the 55th General Council of the Reformed Episcopal Church in June 2017 in Dallas, Texas, USA, 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, of the Reformed Episcopal Church.