INTERVIEW: Bishop Jesus Espinoza (FCE-EC in South America) & Rev. Donald...

VIVA LA REFORMA! AMEN! Bishop Jesus Espinoza (Free Church of England—Evangelical Connection), Mariano Salguero (our translator) and I chatted. It was difficult at times, but a big picture emerged. The Bishop was in the Anglican Church in Chile and educated under its auspices but turned to the FCE-EC to obviate ecumenical, Anglo-Catholics and un-Reformed ideas. The FCE-EC has twenty parishes in South America. The Bishop has had communications with Rev. Grahame Wray (FCE-EC). He supports and uses the FCE-EC BCP including the “Declaration of Principles”—he views those as Protestant and Reformed. He embraces the Thirty-Articles also. When asked if he was a “Calvinist,” he said if I understood it aright, “Completemente” or “Completely.” He believes in unconditional election, predestination, and definite atonement. He’s a Cranmerian monergist. The Bishop understands that the Reformulated Episcopal Church (the correct name rather than the hi-jacked name) has turned against its history countenancing Anglo-Catholicism defined as vestments, theater, and other accoutrements. He get intel-reports from a REC Bishop in Cuba, a church of one in a troubled landscape. Bishop Espinoza asked yours truly what he might recommend to the southern brothers in ministry. That was a last-minute curve ball. Your truly recommended Bishop William Beveridge on the Thirty-Nine Articles, all of the works of Rev. John Strype (English Reformation, Cranmer, Parker, Grindal, and Whitgift), Archbishop James Ussher's "Body of Divinity," and all of the 50ish plus volumes of the Parker Society. We ended our session with a REC BCP “Collect for Pastors” with a joint, joyous exclamation, “VIVA LA REFORMA!” A corporate “Amen” was issued by the three of us. VIVA LA REFORMA!