16 September 1930 A.D. Bishop Robert Livingston Rudolph Passes—Reformed Episcopal Church
16 September 1930 A.D. Bishop Robert Livingston Rudolph
Passes—Reformed Episcopal Church
BISHOP ROBERT LIVINGSTON RUDOLPH, M.A.,D.D., was
consecrated by the Rt. Rev. Samuel Fallows, the Rt. Rev. Charles E. Cheney, and
the Rt.Rev. William T. Sabine, assisted by the Rev.
Dr. W. Russell Collins, the Rev.Dr. William A. Freemantle, the Rev. Dr.
Charles F. Hendricks, the Rev. George W. Huntington,the Rev. Dr. R. Westly
Peach, the Rev. Dr. William D. Stevens, the Rev. Dr.William Tracy, the Rev. Dr.
Joseph D. Wilson, and the Rev. Dr. John H. Oerter of the Reformed Church in
America, in First Church, New York, New York, on January 12, 1909. Died at
Doset, Vermont, September 16, 1930, aged 65.
Robert Livingston Rudolph
From Wikipedia, the free
encyclopedia
Robert Livingston Rudolph (December 29, 1865 — September 16, 1930) was a bishop of the Reformed Episcopal
Church in the early twentieth century. He was the first bishop to be
raised with the church. Rudolph also served as Professor of Dogmatic Theology
and Christian Ethics at the Theological Seminary of
the Reformed Episcopal Church in Philadelphia for twenty-seven years
before his death. Together Rudolph and his son, Robert Knight Rudolph,
trained men for the gospel ministry at this institution for a total of
seventy-four years. Rudolph was widely recognized as an outstanding preacher,
teacher, scholar and bishop.Contents
1 Biography
Biography
Rudolph was born and reared in New York City, attending city schools until the eighth grade. Until the age of ten, he and his family went to the Fourth German Reformed Mission (Reformed Church in America) pastored by John H. Oerter. At that time, to encourage Rudolph to learn English, the family joined the First Reformed Episcopal Church pastored by the Rev. William T. Sabine, who later became a bishop in the Reformed Episcopal Church. After finishing school, Rudolph went into the jewelry business for five years.
Education
Rudolph graduated New York University in 1892, and received a master's degree from the same institution four years later. In 1894 he graduated from the Theological Seminary of the Reformed Episcopal Church. Desiring to study under the famous B.B. Warfield, he continued his postgraduate studies at Princeton Seminary for one more year. In 1906 New York University awarded him an honorary Doctor of Divinity. That same year he traveled to Erlangen, Germany to study under Professor Theodor Zahn, the leader in conservative New Testament scholarship at the time.
Ordination
Rudolph was ordained deacon in 1895 and presbyter in 1896. On January 12, 1909, he was consecrated a bishop in his home church by three bishops and ten presbyters with Bishop Charles Edward Cheney preaching the sermon. Rudolph first served as coadjutor of the New York and Philadelphia Synod before succeeding Bishop Sabine to the bishopric upon the latter’s death in 1913. Throughout the next few years, he also served as Bishop in Canada, acting Bishop in Chicago, and Bishop of the Special Missionary Jurisdiction of the South. He became the Presiding Bishop of the denomination in 1922, and was re-elected to that position in 1924, 1927 and 1930. He is credited with having saved the church from disintegration after the vestments controversy.
Seminary professor
The seminary granted Rudolph a sabbatical for the academic year 1930–31 to study abroad, but he died at his summer home in Dorset, VT, on September 16, 1930, before he was scheduled to leave.
Sources
- Allen C. Guelzo, For the Union of Evangelical Christendom: The
Irony of the Reformed Episcopalians (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania
State University Press, 1994).
- “Bishop Robert Livingston Rudolph, 1865–1930” in RESume (Fall,
1981), pp. 1ff.
- Raymond A. Acker, A History of the Reformed Episcopal Seminary 1886–1964 (Phila.: Theological Seminary of the Reformed Episcopal Church, 1965).
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