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My dear Chaplin and veteran, I am not trying to pick a fight over this point, but you say:

Your understanding of Methodist history is beginning, but there are some points for you to study./i>

I certainly am not an expert on early American Methodiam, but what I described as an association of Methodism with Anglican Episcopalianism was impressed on me three or four years ago while doing some research in the library I mentioned. I will try to go back to find and reread that material I found.

However, remembering our first President as being somewhat of a churchman, I found several references online of which the following is a representative excerpt:

President George Washington was an Episcopalian. He was a member of the Episcopal Church, the American province of the Anglican Communion, which is a branch of Christianity, and which is usually classified as Protestant.

Washington and the family he was raised in were originally Anglicans. The Episcopal Church was not officially founded as a separate province within Anglicanism until 1789, after the American colonies proclaimed independence from Great Britain. Prior to the American Revolutionary War, the Episcopal Church was part of the Church of England,* so Washington was originally a member of the Church of England.

(*my underlining)( Click here for full article)

This tends to argue against your assertion, as does the great impression made on me of what I read about Episcopalian "Methodists" in lower Delaware. I will do my best to check this out and report back ASAP.

With respect --

The Episcopal Church was not officially founded as a separate province within Anglicanism until 1789

Your comment above is my point. George Washington was an Anglican prior to the war. There was no "episcopal" church as we know it.

Methodism, on the other hand, was already running independently in the colonies, and in 1784 officially.

So, as I said, a case can be made for Methodism pre-dating the Episcopal church.

Additionally, the "Episcopal" in the name of the former "Methodist Episcopal" church did not have anything to do with their connection to Episcopalians. It had to do with their church polity/governance structure. Episkopoi = bishop.

My Methodist seminary, Asbury Seminary in Wilmore, Ky, was fairly intent on our learning these things. And the UMC denomination in which I've pastored nigh onto 35 years also is intent in tracing our American lineage back to Coke and Asbury, Wesley being the source of the bishop's ordination of those two early Methodists. In fact, our denominational bookstore is "Cokesbury".

FWIW, I'd really have no problem being associated with early Episcopalianism if that were the case. They were a fine group of Christians tracing back from Anglicanism all the way (eventually) to Jesus.