Alternate religious developments in the US

See what the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1980 edition) says about religious life in British North America during the 19th and 20th centuries:

...Religion in America had always been much more pluralistic than Metropolitan Britain, even before the failed 1776 republican insurrection. Several colonies had already been settled and organized by dissident schismatic sects, and others granted its non-Church of England subjects much wider latitude to practice their faiths than in the home islands. Even though the Jeffersonian movemement for complete political independence failed, the simple fact that America was separated from the mother country by a long and dangerous ocean voyage made a certain degree of de facto social, cultural, and political independence inevitable. This was true with respect to religion, and in Quebec, even language. This natural fissioning tendency was made even more acute because of the size of British North America, which, following the defeat of Napoleon, stretched to the Red River of the South and the Rocky Mountains, and later to the the north Pacific and Russian America. America had always been a beacon for the disaffected, and virtually all sorts of people were able to make their way westward and live virtually untouched by Royal Governors, Assemblies, or Church of England Bishops.

In 1847, the Acts of American Confederation were passed by Parliament, which merged 22 of England's North American colonies into three large self-governing Dominions: Laurentia (including French Speaking and Catholic Quebec, Ontario (a huge interior region including most of the Great Lakes and the entire Mississippi-Missouri River drainage to Nouvorleans), and America (a confederation of the 13 Colonies along the Atlantic seabord, together with Newfoundland and Nova Scotia).

The Act officially established the CoE throughout British North America, but also granted all subjects the right to organize non-established congregations as long as these did not directly subvert Royal authority. The intent of the Act was to "grandfather" the existing religious diversity of British America, but hopefully provide the base for the CoE to thrive as the established church. In actually, the effect was somewhat different. Not only did existing Papist (and even Hebrew) congregations continue to thrive, but the existing schismatic protestant sects continued to grow and fission. Inspite of aggressive missionary activity, the Church of England stagnated.

By 1864, fewer than 25% of Triple Dominions' population were members of a congregation in Communion with the Bishop and Canterbury, yet the Church continued to receive generous revenue from general Dominion tax revenues. Because Royal Governors-General were invariably Anglican, and Anglicans were usually among the wealthiest and most powerful assembly members and royal appointees, the 75% of the population became naturally restive. Chief among these restive groups were Roman Catholics in Quebec and Louisiana, and members of a variety of traditional protestant sects such as the American Methodical Baptists, Wesleyian Zealots, Congregationalists, Freewill Baptists, and the Church of God in Christ.

There were also a number of completely home-grown American sects, which although initially considered "non-CoE protestant" for census and taxation purposes, were effectively non-Christian religions. Chief among these was the fast growing Church of the Revelation in Ontario. This church developed in an area where many ancient mounds and earthworks were common, which in the mid 1800's were widely believed to be the product of a vanished civlization. While superficially accepting the story of God and Christ as outlined in Jewish and Christian tradition, the Revelation Church taught that these events actually occurred thousands of years previously in ancient North America, and that the traditional Jewish and Christian bibles are latter-day, and inaccurate, retellings of these stories. This sect also incorporated a number of Red Indian legends and religious practices, and became very popular among Native Tribes in western Ontario.

In 1906, Revelation Chuch was a key supporter of the Red Indian mutinies in western Ontario - and also instigated similar savage outbreaks in the Mexican border regions of Tejas and California. In 1907, the Ontario Assembly declared that, by supporting the Indian Rebellions, the Revelation Church had acted against Royal Authority and was no longer protected by the religious freedom clauses in the Acts of American Confederation. The ensuing Revelation War of 1907-1911 remains the bloodiest war in the history of British North America, costing the lives of 12,000 Dominion and Imperial soldiers, approximately 10,000 Spanish or Mexican colonial troops, and perhaps as many as 150,000 Native Red Indian and British adherents of the Church. In spite of this, all the only thing Ontario and its allies achieved was to drive the sect underground. Even today, it remains a powerful force for dissention in the still restless border areas of Mexico and Ontario.

On the other hand, the Revelation War created a drive for reunion among the loyal protestant sects, who sought to distance themselves from the primitive excesses of the Revelation Church and its Indian adherants. In 1932, both the Wesleyians and Methodical Baptists entered into reunion negotiations with the Anglican Church of America (as the Tri-Dominion CoE was renamed in 1925). And, of course, the reunion of Canterbury with Rome in 1950 automatically united all American Roman Catholics and Anglicans in a single Communion. This was not particularly popular in the Tri-Dominions, however. Although the two old world churches had been growing more similar in doctrine and practice throughout the early 20th century, their American branches had been growing more dissimilar. Large schismatic groups of American Romans Catholics and Anglicans each split off to retain their separate identities. Today, members of the schismatic True American Anglican Church and American Catholic Synod far outumber the parent churches in all three Dominions...
 
Shakers: On Second thought...

In our time line the Shakers fled to America to escape religious persecution. (After all, most Christians would look askance at a woman who claimed to be the third coming of Christ.) Perhaps they would flee west among the Indians? (The Shakers did have a high regard for Indians...)
 
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