The Reformed Episcopal Church was organized in New York City in 1873 by eight clergymen and twenty laymen who were formerly presbyters and members of the Protestant Episcopal Church. Some in the latter quarter of the 19th Century concluded that their beloved Protestant Episcopal Church had so dramatically changed that they had no alternative but to preserve the old Church through reorganization. The immediate cause of the division lay in the participation of The Rt. Rev. George David Cummins, Assistant Bishop of the Diocese of Kentucky in the Protestant Episcopal Church, at a Communion Service held in the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York City. In the face of criticism and with the conviction that the evangelical and catholic nature and mission of the Protestant Episcopal Church were being lost, Bishop Cummins issued a call to re-form the church. He became the founding Bishop of the Reformed Episcopal Church, thereby maintaining historic succession of orders to this very day in the Reformed Episcopal Church.