ABSTRACT
The Anglican Church was the first to reach the English colonies in America. Robert Hunt, chaplain of the Virginia colony, conducted services under 'an old saile' at Jamestown shortly after the colony was founded. In 1626 the House of Burgesses made the Anglican Church the established, or official, church of the colony. The Congregational Church, with about 575,000 members in 658 churches at the time of the Revolution, was the largest denomination in the thirteen colonies. The two religious groups which found least acceptance in the colonies were Catholics and Jews. The Presbyterian Church was the third largest denomination in the colonies in number of members and largest in number of churches. In the other southern colonies, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, usually called the SPG, or the Venerable Society, had to subsidize the salaries of Anglican clergymen, missionaries and schoolteachers.
