Anglican America: From the Founding to the Future

By Peter Johnston

ANGLICAN COMPASS

February 3, 2026

For more than 400 years, the Anglican tradition has played a central role in the development of the United States of America. The intellectual culture of recent decades has obscured this historical truth, both on account of revisionist historians who see America as a secular nation and also by the failure of Anglicans to tell our own story. But as lifelong Anglican George Washington wrote in 1794, “truth will ultimately prevail where pains is taken to bring it to light.” With some effort, then, we will see the importance of Christianity, and especially Anglicanism, to the American Experiment.

This brief survey is intended as the first of an extended series of articles on the topic of Anglican America. Written by a broad cross-section of authors over the course of 2026, our series will engage the national discourse of the nation’s semiquincentennial year. Even more importantly, with this series, we lay claim to our own notable history, seeking as living heirs to rediscover and reassert the genius of Anglicanism as we chart a course for the future. May this work bless our churches, our nation, and the proclamation of the gospel of Christ to all nations of the earth.

Anglican America: Five Eras

We can divide the history of Anglican America into five eras, each spanning approximately one century. Here I provide a brief summary of each era, together with a selection of notable figures. The date after each figure represents the feast day from the calendar of the BCP 2019 or a proposed date for those of particular piety or religious significance, indicated by an asterisk. Those whose notability is primarily secular but who were nonetheless Anglican during their lives have not been assigned a potential commemoration.

17th Century: Colonial Anglicans

The first Christian liturgy in the colonies was conducted in 1607, at Jamestown, Virginia. The people prayed from the Book of Common Prayer, gathered outside under a ship’s sail. By the end of the 17th century, Anglicanism was the established church of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and even New York City. The deep roots of Anglicanism in these states remain evident today, and the oldest Anglican parishes from the colonial period, such as St. Philip’s Church in Charleston, South Carolina, and Falls Church in Virginia, are now among the nation’s largest Anglican congregations.

Moreover, the Puritan colonists in New England were themselves a movement within Anglicanism. Their early clergy were ordained as Anglican priests, and although they eventually separated from the Anglican Church, the tradition left a lasting imprint on them. This accounts for the strong alignment between Puritan and Anglican preachers during the Great Awakening of the 1730s and 1740s.

Notable 17th Century Anglicans

Robert Hunt, Priest and Chaplain to Jamestown Colony (April 26*)

Alexander Whitaker, Priest and Missionary to Virginia (March 13*)

Pocahontas, First Native American Convert

Thomas Bray, Priest, Missionary, and Founder of Public Libraries (Feb 15)

John Winthrop, Governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony

Richard Mather, Priest, Translator, Theologian (April 22*)

John Eliot, Priest, Missionary to Native Americans, Translator, Educator (May 21*)

John Harvard and Elihu Yale, Philanthropists

John and Charles Wesley, Priests and Reformers of the Church (March 3)

18th Century: The Revolution of Anglican Laity

In the run-up to the American Revolution, a majority of Anglican clergy were Loyalists, and in the Revolution, many of these clergy actually left the country. The recent musical Hamilton, for example, spoofs the New York clergyman Samuel Seabury, who took the opposite side of Alexander Hamilton and argued against the revolution. What is often missed here, however, is that Alexander Hamilton was himself a layman in the Anglican church. Hamilton and Seabury thus reflect, in microcosm, the major theme of Anglicanism in relation to the Revolution: clerical loyalism, together with lay leadership.

The most prominent Revolutionary Anglican, of course, was George Washington himself. He was not a rare case; more than half of all delegates to the Continental Congress were Anglicans, and they were all laymen.

In the aftermath of the American Revolution, Anglican parishes faced the dilemma of how to continue now that the political link to England had been severed. But this dilemma proved a blessing in disguise, for the old system of sending seminarians to England was never very effective anyway. The clear need was for a new line of bishops in America, which was achieved in the consecrations of Samuel Seabury of Connecticut (yes, him again!) and William White of Pennsylvania, who formed The Episcopal Church to continue the Anglican ministry in the newly formed United States.

Notable 18th Century Anglicans

George Washington, General and President

Martha Washington, First Lady

Alexander Hamilton, General and Cabinet Member

Samuel Seabury, First American Bishop (November 14)

William White, First Presiding Bishop of the USA (July 17)

19th Century: Anglicans on the Frontier

With the arrival of Bishops in America, it became possible for Anglicans to pursue frontier missionary efforts in the American West. The prototype for this ministry was Jackson Kemper, consecrated by William White in 1835 to serve as the church’s first missionary bishop. Kemper subsequently ministered in a territory including Indiana, Missouri, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, and Nebraska, an area roughly the size of Europe!

The era of expansion was also marked by the contributions of remarkable Anglican laity. Most prominently, President Thomas Jefferson appointed two Anglican laymen, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, to explore the newly acquired Louisiana territory (which extended from modern Louisiana northwest to Montana!). Though Lewis died shortly after the expedition in 1809, Clark settled in St. Louis, where he led the effort to establish the first Anglican parish and served on its vestry.

Wherever Anglicans went, they established schools, colleges, and other institutions to support the secular education of the people and the spiritual education of future clergy. An important early figure in this movement was William Augustus Muhlenberg, who developed the model of the Church School and trained the next generation of leaders. James Lloyd Breck, for example, went from working in New York for Muhlenberg to serving under Kemper in Wisconsin and founding Nashotah House.

The Civil War saw a severe division within the American church, with clergy and laity serving in both the Union and Confederate armies. The southern branch of the church declared itself independent, though the two sides reunited after the war. In northern states, many Anglicans became staunch abolitionists, with some churches even serving as hubs on the Underground Railroad. Less than 20 years later, in 1885, the first African American bishop, Samuel David Ferguson, was consecrated as the Missionary Bishop to Liberia.

Notable 19th Century Anglicans

Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, Presidents

Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, Explorers

Jackson Kemper, First Missionary Bishop in the United States (May 24)

William Augustus Muhlenberg, Priest, Reformer, and Educator (April 8)

James Lloyd Breck, Priest, Missionary, and Educator (April 3)

Absalom Jones, First African-American Priest (Feb 13)

Alexander Crummell, Priest and Abolitionist (August 10)

Harriett Starr Cannon, Founder of the Community of St. Mary and Educator (April 5*)

Constance and her Companions, Martyrs of Memphis (August 9)

Samuel David Ferguson, Missionary and First African-American Bishop (August 2*)

Phillips Brooks, Bishop and Hymwriter (January 23*)

William Reed Huntington, Priest and Ecumenist (July 27)

20th Century: The Rise and Fall of the Anglican Mainline

By the turn of the 20th century, Anglicanism was newly confident in its place in broader American society. This explains the ambition (and presumption) of Episcopalians in Washington, D.C., to build a new “National Cathedral,” constructed of stone, in the European Gothic style. Based on designs by architect Henry Vaughan, construction began in 1907, with an address by President Theodore Roosevelt. As construction continued throughout the 20th century, the Cathedral became the site of major state events, including inaugural prayer services, memorials, and presidential burials. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a lifelong member of the Episcopal Church, began the practice of attending an annual prayer meeting on the occasion of his inauguration.

The high status of the Episcopal Church contributed to both its rise and its fall in the 20th century. On the one hand, the Episcopal Church became a natural landing place for an upwardly mobile postwar middle class. By 1960, the membership rolls swelled to more than 3,500,000 across some 7500 parishes. On the other hand, the Episcopal Church’s close alliance with the educational and social elite meant that it was unable to resist the liberal theology and the sexual revolution that swept universities and elite culture in the mid-20th century.

Both clergy and lay leaders began to openly question central tenets of the faith, including the divinity of Christ, his virgin birth, his bodily resurrection, and his judgment of the saved and the damned. Moreover, biblical morality, especially concerning gender and sexual ethics, was relativized as a relic of a bygone age. As the church lost confidence in God’s word, it began an inevitable decline. This culminated in the 2003 consecration of Gene Robinson, a divorced man in a same-sex union, to be the Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire.

Notable 20th Century Anglicans

Henry Vaughan, Architect of the National Cathedral (June 30*)

Samuel Shoemaker, Priest and Renewer of Society (Jan 31)

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, President

Jonathan Myrick Daniels, Seminarian and Martyr (August 21)

Alfred Stanway, Missionary Bishop and Educator (June 27*)

George H.W. Bush, President

J.I. Packer, Priest and Reformer, First Canon Theologian of the ACNA (July 17*)

21st Century: Anglican Realignment and the Future

Beginning in the late 1990s and accelerating after the consecration of Gene Robinson in 2003, a group of individuals, parishes, and eventually dioceses leave the Episcopal Church, seeking oversight from orthodox Anglican bishops worldwide. In 2008, those same bishops gathered in Jerusalem for the first GAFCON conference. They issued the Jerusalem Statement and Declaration, which reiterated the Biblical teaching on marriage, deplored the innovations of the Episcopal Church, and called for the creation of a new Anglican province in North America. The subsequent year saw the formation of the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA). Today, the ACNA is small but growing, with some 125,000 Anglicans across 1000 parishes.

The most important city in this Anglican realignment was Pittsburgh, for two reasons. First, the founding Archbishop of the ACNA was Bob Duncan, the Bishop of Pittsburgh, who led most of his diocese out of the Episcopal Church. Second, Pittsburgh was home to Trinity Anglican Seminary, founded in 1975 and having planted seeds of renewal for multiple decades. From the start, Trinity focused on the authority of the Bible, the importance of a personal relationship and commitment to Christ, and Christ’s call to evangelize the nations. These values would shape the emerging ethos of the ACNA, revitalizing Anglicanism for the 21st century.

The Ven. Dr. Peter Johnston is the Ministry President of Anglican Compass. He is a priest and archdeacon in the Anglican Diocese of All Nations and the rector of Trinity Lafayette. He lives with his wife, Carla, and their nine children near Lafayette, Louisiana.