Youngest Bishop

In a church on the ground floor of a Manhattan apartment house one day last week three middle-aged bishops consecrated a 33-year-old who thereupon became the youngest bishop in the U. S. Two years ago the youngest was a 32-year-old Roman Catholic, Auxiliary Bishop Raymond Augustine Kearney of Brooklyn (TIME, Jan. 7, 1935). Last week's youngest was Rev.

Howard David Higgins of the Reformed Episcopal Church, which has 8,200 members in the U. S. The entire hierarchy of his church in North America did the consecrating: Bishop Frank V. C. Cloak of the Chicago Synod, Bishop Joseph Edgar Kearney of the "Missionary Jurisdiction" of South Carolina, Bishop George Marshall of the First Synod of Canada (affiliated with the Free Church of England). Bishop Higgins was made Assistant Bishop of the New York and Philadelphia Synod, a confusing title since he will actually run the Synod, assisting no one. Episcopal mainly in that it uses the Prayer Book with "high" elements deleted, the Reformed Church was founded in 1873 by a discontented Episcopalian, Rev. George David Cummins. It invites all comers to Holy Communion, considers its bishops merely "head presbyters," no more potent than other priests. A typical, evangelical Reformed Episcopalian is Bishop Higgins, who acquired a touch of Presbyterianism at Princeton Seminary, whither he went after attending Columbia and the Reformed Episcopal Seminary in Philadelphia. Since his ordination in 1928, affable Churchman Higgins, a bachelor, has been rector of New York's First Reformed Episcopal Church. In 1930 he persuaded his congregation of 400 to build the church and apartment house in which he was consecrated, a 14-story building in East Soth Street which, almost alone among Manhattan skyscraper churches, has consistently shown a profit.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.