What is considered the first Protestant Church in the USA?

What is considered the first Protestant Church in the USA?

In 1534, King Henry VIII of England split from the Roman Catholic Church and created his own church hierarchy. Thus, Henry became the head of the church as well as the head of the government. After his death, Henry’s daughter Mary attempted to return England to Catholicism. When Elizabeth I succeeded her, a system of religion, called the Church of England, was established that placed the church strictly under control of the monarch. Where Henry was referred to as the “Supreme Head of the Church”, Elizabeth was called the “Supreme Governor”.

Upon Elizabeth’s death, James I inherited the throne partly because he did not profess the Catholic faith. King James, as the head of the Church of England, wanted to establish a foothold for Protestantism in the New World, for both spiritual and political reasons. The English strongly believed it was their duty to spread the gospel and convert the indigenous people they encountered to the Protestant Christianity. King James also recognized the importance of establishing English colonies as a counter to the energetic colonizing efforts of the Spanish, who were zealously converting native people in their colonies to Roman Catholicism. In the original charter granted by King James to the Virginia Company on April 10, 1606, the first motivation to colonize the New World mentioned is to spread the Christian religion. This statement was made by or on behalf of King James to the major investors in the Virginia Company:

"Wee, greately commending and graciously accepting of theire desires to the furtherance of soe noble a worke which may, by the providence of Almightie God, hereafter tende to the glorie of His Divine Maiestie in propogating of Christian religion to suche people as yet live in darkeness and miserable ignorance of the true knowledge and worshippe of God and may in tyme bring the infidels and salvages living in those parts to humane civilitie and to a settled and quiet governmente . . ."

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The King permitted what we term, in our modern day, a wide-open Sunday, with all kinds of pleasure being tolerated. The Brownists, Puritans, Presbyterians, etc., uttered emphatic protests; the King countering with orders of arrest or banishment. A party of these Brownists fled to Holland, and there, under their pastor, Robinson, at Leyden, they worshiped and observed their Sundays as the dictates of their conscience required.

The immigrants were not all Pilgrims. Brown, in his "First Republic in America," states that, "Some were from Essex, London, and other places in England. William Moline, his wife and children, are said to have been Huguenots; Christopher Martin, `the Governors in the Mayflower was a member of the Virginia Company, and owned lands on the James River; Stephen Hopkins was an old Virginia planter." One of the signers of the contract, Edward Listen was killed near Flower lieu Hundred in the massacre of 1622. The captain of the -Mayflower, Thomas Jones, and his mate, John Clarks, were employes of the London Company. One of the owners of the Mayflower, Thomas Weston, owned a plantation in Virginia, on the James River. His ships traded between Jamestown and London.

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This pertains to the people so now for the churches.

:-: 1622 :-:

Burial Hill was the site of the embattled church erected in 1622, and contains many ancient tombstones and the foundations of a watchtower (1643), now covered with sod. Her eager human freight, there stands to-day a church which through the centuries has preserved unbroken records and maintained a continuous ministry. This is the First Church in Plymouth and the first church in America, the church of Scrooby, Leyden, and the Mayflower company, the church of Brewster and Bradford, of Winslow and Carver, whose first covenant, signed in the cabin of the little emigrant ship, is still the basis of its fellowship.

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Roger Williams founded the church congregation in 1638 shortly after he founded Providence in 1636, Williams believed that Christians should not meet in a separate meeting house. For the first sixty years the church met in a grove or orchard and in congregants' homes. Shortly after its founding, the church became Arminian in tone, eventually evolving into what is now called a Free Will Baptist church. William Wickenden, a colonial dissident, served as one of the first ministers of the church, and nearby Wickenden Street took his name. Wickenden was succeeded by Gregory Dexter. In 1700 Reverend Pardon Tillinghast built the first church building, a 400-square-foot (37 m2) structure, on Smith and North Main Streets, and in 1711 he gifted the building and land to the church in a deed describing the church as General Six-Principle Baptist.

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The Episcopal Church traces its history from its origins in the Church of England. It stresses its continuity with the early universal Western church and maintains apostolic succession.

When John Cabot led the first English expedition onto North American land on June 24, 1497, he must have had some sort of religious service – it was St. John the Baptist's Day and the day was likely not a coincidence – and yet there is no extant record. In any case, Cabot sailed under the authority of King Henry VII and the English Church was still firmly Roman Catholic.

The first Church of England service recorded on North American soil was a celebration of Holy Communion at Frobisher Bay in the last days of August or early September 1578. The Anglican Church of Canada's Prayer Book fixes the day of commemoration as September 3. The chaplain on Martin Frobisher's voyage was " 'Maister Wolfall (probably Robert Wolfall), minister and preacher', who had been charged by Queen Elizabeth 'to serve God twice a day'.

L8r

If one assumes the Pilgrims to be the first Protestant Christian colonists in the North America then the answer would be independent Calvinists, associated in principle with the Dutch Reformed Church and Presbyterians. I must add that Pilgrim was considered an insulting description given to those Christians who rose up against the loose morality of Anglicanism and was never an official denomination. However, if one considers the German colonists who founded St. Augustine Florida, circa 1494, to be the first Protestants then the answer would have to be Lutheran.

A little side note: I have belonged, at various times in my life, to both the Reformed and the Lutheran Church, so I have no preference for whichever group or denomination you want to pick.

Church of England

BTW the term Pilgrim was not an insult

The first use of the word "pilgrims" for the Separatists who came on the Mayflower appeared in William Bradford’s "Of Plymouth Plantation" in context of Hebrews 11:13–16

The Church of England.

it's just a hunch but I think it's the right before the 2nd Protestant Church in the USA

Episcopal

The church that arose from the roman church that left the original Orthodox Church.

What's the big deal with all the 'firsts' ( catholic vs Protestant etc). Christ will not care who was first. He cares about whether you obeyed God's word or not in your life on earth.

Maybe that is correct

I would just be totally guessing but would say Methodist.