By Charles Burris
October 18, 2026
The American Establishment
The concept of the Establishment was first used in England referring to the established (or official) state church, the Anglican Church or Church of England, created by the usurper and schismatic Henry Tudor during the Protestant Reformation.
As two later disparate sources document (Leornard and Mark Silk, The American Establishment, and Samuel Blumenfeld, Is Public Education Necessary?) the origins of the American Establishment began during the presidency of Thomas Jefferson in 1803 during the Massachusetts conflict for control of the Congregationalist State religious establishment and Harvard College, between the liberal Unitarians versus the conservative Trinitarian Calvinists.