AHC: Episcopalian Majority in the U.S.

Could this come to pass under any circumstances around the late-18th / 19th Centuries? I'm aware the Episcopal Church has never been an especially strong denomination, but it would make for a seriously interesting America.
 
I don't know how that could be done without preventing religious dissenters from settling . . . but if you do that, you will not have thirteen colonies and certainly not as many total settlers.
 
One of the huge problems for Episcopalians was the bottleneck of the ARW.

Most Anglican priests at the time had to swear loyalty to the King as part of their ordination (the King being the head of the Church, and Anglicanism being the Established Church of England).

So, in 12 of the 13 colonies, all Anglican priests were either Tories or oathbreakers - which meant that for a goodly number of years, there could be no Anglican services in much of America. This devastated the local church, and reduced it massively.

The Methodist Church is a direct offshoot and survivor of those years - Methodist clubs (mostly at Anglican churches) could still meet and have prayer meetings, even if they didn't have a priest for the sacraments. And then, John Wesley (who, by the way, was an Anglican priest, and stayed that way until he died), 'ordained' a couple of men (Coke and Asbury) to provide sacraments for the Methodist clubs (which became Methodist churches) in the US.

You also, of course, have the Puritan/Congregationalist/ etc grouping in New England,

The other problem is that the Anglican (Episcopal) church is Episcopal - bishops are very important, and the ultimate source of ordinations/sacraments/whatever.

So. What you'd need would be a PoD where a bishop or three (preferably) are sent to the Colonies decades before the Revolution, and there's a local hierarchy on the ground. Then, have some of the Bishops break with England in the Revolution, and have a corps of 'Patriot' (i.e. rebel :)) clergy, who can spread themselves to cover all the parishes in need of clergy.

Have an ARW equivalent of Leonidas Polk in the ACW (a fighting bishop) and you could have a much bigger Episcopal church after the war was over.

Majority would be tough. But Virginia had had an established Anglican church, and was the biggest colony, so it's at least possible.
 
So. What you'd need would be a PoD where a bishop or three (preferably) are sent to the Colonies decades before the Revolution, and there's a local hierarchy on the ground.

This is a tough one. Rumors of a bishop being sent was one of the many fears that eventually drove the Revolution. Americans were, broadly, dissenting Protestants and they reaaaaaally didn't like bishops. Even the colonies with Anglican establishments were predominantly low-church Anglican with local vestries controlling local churches. The only place where you would find relatively large communities of Anglicans receptive of a bishop would be New York City, and they didn't represent a large enough group to really be able to calm all the other groups in the colonies who really, really wouldn't be.

Honestly the whole AHC is really tough. You really have to go back to the initial settlement to change the religious mix the US acquired, because you're not going to attract huge numbers of congregationalist and presbyterian polities to adopt episcopalian polity, not without something really extreme.
 
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