29
December 1865 A.D. Bishop
Robert Livingston Rudolph Born—Reformed Episcopal Church
From
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Bishop
Robert L. Rudolph
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.
Biography
Rudolph was born and reared in New
York City, attending city schools through the eighth grade. Until the age of
ten, he and his family went to the Fourth German Reformed Mission (RCA) pastored by Dr. John H. Oerter. At that time, to encourage Rudolph to
learn English, the family joined the First Reformed Episcopal Church pastored
by 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 bishop in his
home church by three bishops and ten presbyters. Bishop Charles Edward Cheney preached 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
Reformed
Episcopal Seminary (2003)
The Board of Trustees of the Reformed Episcopal
Seminary elected Rudolph to teach Dogmatic Theology in 1903. He
resigned as Bishop Sabine’s assistant in order to take up the challenge of this
new work. Later, he became Professor of Biblical Theology and Christian Ethics.
He devoted twenty-seven years of his life to training men for pastoral service,
using A.A. Hodge’s Outlines of Theology, which presents theological topics in question
and answer format, to stimulate discussion in the classroom. And to make sure
that his students knew the Bible, he required that they read through it in its
entirety in two years using Dr.
James M. Gray’s Biblical Synthesis course.
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.
Bishop Robert Westly Peach expressed
the sentiment of the whole church when he referred to Rudolph as the greatest
bishop the church had had.
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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