History of the Catholic Church in the United States British-America-born Catholic priest. In 1788, after the Revolution, John Jay urged the New York Legislature to require office-holders to renounce foreign authorities "in all matters ecclesiastical as well as civil." In one state, North Carolina, the Protestant test oath would not be changed until 1868. The Catholic population of the United States, which had been 35,000 in 1790, increased to 195,000 in 1820 and then ballooned to about 1.6 million in 1850, by which time, Catholics had become the country’s largest denomination. Between 1860 and 1890 the population of Roman Catholics in the United States tripled primarily through immigration and
United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America that was upheld by the 1981 General Assembly. Ordained in the United Church of Christ, Kaseman declined to affirm straightforwardly the deity of Christ, His sinless nature and the bodily resurrection. This case resulted in a further wave of departures from the UPCUSA, including those who founded the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, along with longtime Pittsburgh Seminary professor John Gerstner. As the UPCUSA continued its more liberal shift, talks had begun regarding a merger between the UPCUSA and the Presbyterian Church in the United States, who had split from the main Presbyterian Church in the United States of America in 1861