WI First Great Awakening turned American colonies Catholic

The Great Awakenings were a series of Protestant revivalist movements that among other things gave American Protestantism its unique character.

The First Great Awakening was in the early 18th century. What if the most successful preachers were Jesuits and they converted most Americans to Catholicism?
 
How? Jesuits have only been successful in converting populations in which Catholicism was a sacralist institution (i.e. the state forced you to be Catholic.) In fact, Christian evangelism after the year 310 AD pretty much is a story of converting kings and then the kings force their subjects to convert. While there are exceptions (Nestorian Christianity in some parts the east, for example), it is the exception, not the rule.

I say this with some shame, as I am an Orthodox catechumen and my own church has largely been unsuccessful in recent evangelism efforts because of this.
 
I really wanted to do a a thread on the possibility of Americans rallying around the Young Pretender, and a very different war of independence than IOTL. But the best way to do this would be to make most Americans Catholic. Using the eighteenth century Great Awakening as a POD works for this and has greater political and cultural implications than a nineteenth century POD, because you start changing things before the USA is formed. The existence of the USA itself could be butterflied away.

What I had in mind was at least of the more charismatic preachers converts to Catholicism for some reason, not necessarily Jesuits. And they preach Catholic doctrine, but in English. I hadn't thought of the Latin issue, but surely the homilies were always in the vernacular?
 
The Great Awakenings were a series of Protestant revivalist movements that among other things gave American Protestantism its unique character.

The First Great Awakening was in the early 18th century. What if the most successful preachers were Jesuits and they converted most Americans to Catholicism?
You might need to change the (Catholic) Church's doctrine on conversion. OTL the conflict on the "accomodation" of rites in context of conversion was resolved at the benefit of the non-accomodating Dominicans against the Jesuits. If the Church changed its position, using an earlier PoD (a new mendicant order created in Spain at the time of the Conquest and resolved on using accomodation ?) or an late 17th c. PoD (Jesuits winning the argument in front of the Dominicans), that would allow some flexibility in the conversion policies, maybe enough to gain successes in the Protestant-heavy 13 colonies.
 
Top