Читать книгу Dividing the Faith - Richard J. Boles - Страница 10

Reverend Josiah Cotton of the First Congregational Church in Providence, Rhode Island, like most of his colleagues, sought to minister to the blacks and Indians in his community and brought some of them into a formal relationship with the church. When he baptized and admitted blacks or Indians, furthermore, he articulated theological reasons for the inclusion of all people into the church. Many New England ministers felt obligated to work diligently and seek the conversion of all types of people in their community. Between 1730 and 1743, Cotton baptized two people of African descent and two Indian women. While this number is quite small, the scarcity of blacks and Indians did not necessarily undermine the importance of these events to the people involved. In January 1730, Cotton baptized “Elizabeth the Servant Child of Margaret Betty (Whose father was a Negro & Mother a White woman).” At the church service, Cotton preached from Genesis 17:13, which states that “He that is born in thy house, and he that is bought with thy money, must needs be circumcised.” Cotton likely argued that baptism for Christians, like circumcision for ancient Israel, was a rite that should apply to servants in Christian households. (Did Cotton or anyone else see the irony of talking about circumcision in relation to the baptism of a girl?) Elizabeth Anthony, “an Indian Woman,” was baptized and received as a church member in 1734. On December 26, 1742, in the context of widespread religious revivalism in New England, Cotton wrote that “Ann the Negro Woman Servant of Col. Jabez Bowen & Hannah Newfield a Free Indian Woman under the Cov[enant] & were both baptized, on which occasion I preached from 10 Acts 34, 35.” This text is another one that supports inclusivity in churches: “Then Peter opened his mouth, and said, of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons: But in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with him.” Although little else is known about these individuals, their inclusion in this church and Cotton’s sermons are noteworthy because Cotton ministered to black and Indian people long before and also during an intense period of revivalism in his congregation. Cotton supported and participated in the awakenings in 1741, but he was not a radical “New Light” minister, and he later turned against the new revival practices. A number of his congregants in 1743 accused him of being “not evangelical enough in his publick performances.” They claimed that Cotton opposed “the work of God’s spirit” and that he was “a preacher of damnable good works or doctrines,” and these critics seceded from Cotton’s church. Whether or not Cotton was “evangelical enough,” he used the same biblical texts as other ministers to justify baptizing blacks and Indians, and he brought some of them into his Congregational church.32

Most Congregational and Anglican churches in New England were multiracial during 1730 to 1749. In churches across Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts (including parts of Maine), and southern New Hampshire, blacks and Indians not only attended, but some were also baptized and accepted as members. In at least 121 Congregational churches, blacks and/or Indians affiliated as members or by being baptized between 1730 and 1749.33 These Congregational churches were led by pastors who embraced the new methods of Whitefieldarian revivalism, pastors who consistently opposed Whitefield and other itinerant preachers, and pastors who first embraced the awakenings but later lessened or reversed their support for the religious changes swelling across New England in the early 1740s. Incomplete church records and inconsistent racial notations in some original and transcribed records make estimating the number of congregations that did not baptize multiple black people difficult. For Massachusetts’s Congregational churches, my sample of church records included fourteen congregations whose records did not have multiple, identifiable black baptisms between 1730 and 1749.34

While some congregations in New England baptized only one or two blacks in a decade, other congregations baptized ten in a year. Since baptism usually occurred only once in a person’s life and since blacks constituted only a small portion of the population of rural New England towns, even a few black baptisms were significant in this context. Though blacks and Indians were most prevalent in the churches of port towns or communities located near Indian land reserves, they also appeared across areas settled by Europeans. Because so many Congregational and Anglican churches in New England baptized blacks and because social conventions encouraged widespread church attendance, almost all New England churches likely included black attendees at weekly worship services.35

In New England, both Anglican and Congregational churches had at least pretentions toward being established churches, and as religious establishments in these colonies, they sought to entail and represent the entirety of colonial society. Anglican parishes, of course, were part of the Church of England, the legally established form of Protestantism in England, but they did not receive tax support and were not prevalent enough across New England to fully constitute an established church there. Congregational churches were dissenters from the Church of England and therefore were not officially an established church (in Scotland, the Presbyterian Kirk was officially established). However, Congregational churches across New England received tax support and functioned, at least for public worship, as all-encompassing parishes.

Congregationalists were the most numerous and influential Christians in New England. Nearly every village, town, and city in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire had one or more Congregational church. Rhode Island was more heterogeneous than any other part of New England, with greater numbers of Baptists, Quakers, and Jews, but it still had Congregational churches and a few Anglican churches. Church buildings across most of New England were known as meetinghouses, and they served as the setting for local government. These churches were outgrowths of seventeenth-century Puritan churches, and they still maintained moderate to strict forms of Reformed Christianity (Calvinism). As the main public establishment in many towns, Congregational churches often sought to be relatively accessible to all nearby inhabitants. Congregationalists believed that every person in each town, regardless of social position, should attend weekly church services. Ministers’ understanding of the Bible and their desire to make godly societies inclined them to include all people in their congregations, but not every person who attended church services was considered a church member. Ministers encouraged people whose “godly walk” or “conversation” was consistent with their profession to join their church as a member.36

Most Congregational churches had two levels of membership: full members, who could take communion and vote in church affairs, and so-called “halfway members,” who could not do these two things (many of the congregations most affected by the awakenings dropped owning the covenant and “halfway” membership in the 1740s). Both types of members could be baptized and have their children and other young household members baptized. They were also both subject to church discipline. The halfway members joined by “owning the covenant,” attesting to a statement of faith, which was easier than the process of becoming a full member. Full or communing members usually had to share their profession of Reformed doctrine or their relation that attested to their personal experience of God’s work of salvation in their life. These professions or relations were usually shared with the pastor and existing church members, who determined whether to admit each person or not. Some congregations had relatively accessible membership rolls while other congregations sought to restrict membership, as much as possible, to the truly converted. Many regular attendees and devout parishioners in Congregational churches waited a long time—or refrained entirely—from fully joining their church because they were concerned about or feared taking communion in an unworthy manner.37

Despite its limitations, owning the covenant or halfway membership provided a formal place in church life and the community, and not a few blacks and Indians owned the covenant to received baptism. The original intention of the Halfway Covenant was not to provide a means for blacks or Indians to affiliate with churches, but by the 1740s, these people often affiliated with churches through this more accessible process. Servant or slave children could be baptized if their masters were members or halfway members—just as though the servant children were biological children. For example, on September 6, 1741, the First Congregational Church of Windsor, Connecticut, baptized a black person named John when he owned the covenant for himself and another named London, on account of his master’s profession. In most cases, masters who had enslaved children baptized on their account were full members.38

Though Church of England parishes in New England were few in number compared to the Congregational churches, the wealth of some parishioners and their location in port towns made them more influential than their numbers imply. Many Church of England parishioners were slaveholders who encouraged their slaves to come to church. At the very least, blacks were baptized at Anglican churches in Portsmouth, New Hampshire; Newburyport and Marblehead, Massachusetts; Boston’s three Anglican churches; and Rhode Island’s four oldest Anglican churches between 1730 and 1749. Some of these congregations also included Indians.39 At Trinity Church in Newport, Rhode Island, fifty-seven people were identified as “negro,” and two people were identified as “Indian” in the baptismal records of this era. In 1746, this church was described as a “large and increasing congregation, not of whites alone, but of blacks also; no less than twelve of the latter sort having been admitted members of it, by the holy sacrament of baptism, within twelve months.” Over this period, it was common in any given year for 4 or 5 percent of the people baptized to be identified as “negro” at Trinity Newport. Between 1746 and 1749, however, 10 to 25 percent of yearly baptisms were of black people. In these years, the percentages of blacks baptized at Trinity Church were close to or exceeded the percentage of Newport’s population that was black, but the cause of these higher rates of baptisms is unclear.40

The Church of England’s approach to the sacraments of baptism and communion enabled many blacks and Indians to participate in its worship. For Anglicans, baptism was also how adults became church members. Anglicans were told to teach blacks and Indians that they can “enter into the Church of Christ by Baptism.” The Church of England baptized children of believing parents and used catechisms to teach them doctrines. Notorious sinners were about the only adults who were excluded from the sacrament of baptism and membership by the Anglican clergy. For unbaptized adults, including blacks and Indians, Church of England clergy sought to educate them about the doctrines of their faith before admitting them into the church. This education often included memorizing the Lord’s Prayer, the Ten Commandments, and church catechisms. Some of this material, including Book of Common Prayer catechisms, emphasized that all people owed obedience to superiors, including the king, parents, and masters. Once they were baptized and admitted into the church, Anglicans instructed blacks and Indians about their “Obligations . . . to love their Fellow-Christians, and frequently to join with them in the Publick Worship of God, in Prayers and Praise, and partaking of the Lord’s Supper.” Anglican parishes were open and available to anyone who lived nearby, and membership through baptism made these churches more accessible to blacks and some Indians.41

With the American colonies becoming increasingly valuable economically and militarily to Britain by the late seventeenth century, the Church of England turned its attention to bringing wayward colonists, blacks, and Indians into its fold. To that end, in 1701, leading Anglicans founded the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG). It sent ordained clergy to America and sought to enhance the prominence of the church in the colonies, especially in the colonies without a tax-supported Anglican establishment. Starting in the 1720s, the SPG gave increasing attention to catechizing and converting slaves, and they established a fund in 1729 to pay for clergy for that purpose. The SPG also owned a plantation and purchased more than four hundred enslaved people who generated profits that supported SPG missionaries. The SPG secretary wrote in 1725 that the Society does “require all their missionaries who have any negroes or other slaves of their own to instruct them in the principles of the Christian religion and to baptize them as soon as they are sufficiently instructed and are willing to receive baptism.” Missionaries were to set an example for other Anglicans by educating and baptizing their slaves if the slaves were interested. Apart from sending priests to northern parishes, the SPG also encouraged the opening of schools to educate enslaved black people. In the eighteenth century, the SPG sent hundreds of missionaries to locations around the Atlantic, and most went to the mainland colonies.42

Congregational and Anglican churches across the European-controlled portions of New England regularly baptized blacks and Indians. Figure 1.1 shows the locations of Congregational and Anglican churches that baptized and/or admitted multiple black or Indian peoples in the 1730s and 1740s. It is clear that more blacks were baptized than were admitted to full communion and membership in Congregational churches, which was often the same pattern for white church attendees. It is safe to say that the number of black people at a weekly service was higher than the number of black baptisms at each church, and, as such, black men, women, and children were present at the majority of worship services in Congregational and Anglican churches.

FIGURE 1.1. Map of Congregational and Anglican church locations in New England that baptized and/or admitted blacks or Indians, 1730–49. Map courtesy of William Keegan.

Boston, the largest town in colonial New England and home to Massachusetts’s largest concentration of enslaved blacks, was a center for interracial religious activity. In the 1740s, Boston’s population was somewhere between 7 and 15 percent black. All of Boston’s oldest nine Congregational churches and three Anglican churches baptized black people during the 1730s and 1740s, as indicated in table 1.1. In some of these churches, a small number of Indians were also baptized. Most of the Congregational churches admitted some black people to full membership too. However, there were noteworthy differences in the levels of black participation in these churches.43 The diversity of Congregational churches in this one location makes Boston a useful example for analyzing black church affiliation in New England.

Boston Congregational churches connected to the Great Awakening’s revivalism baptized many black people, but some blacks were also baptized in the Congregational and Anglican churches that did not promote the revival. In other words, some of the revival-focused Congregational churches did more to recruit members than the other Congregational churches by actively seeking out black congregants, but black people still joined churches whose pastors did not do so. Black people did not always come to churches in search of emotional or enthusiastic revivalism.44 What seems to have attracted many black people to predominantly white churches was the personal influence of pastors who were active in parish visitations and catechisms. The Congregational churches that showed the most vitality and baptized and admitted the most people were those whose minister not only embraced revival techniques associated with Whitefield but also frequently visited and catechized their congregants.45

Among Congregational churches, Old South, Brattle Street, and New North were the most vibrant, the most in favor of revivalism, and the most active in pastoral engagement with the laity. In the words of historian George Harper, the pastors of these three churches engaged in “systematic visitation, catechesis, religious societies, and other tools of hands-on ministry.”46 These three churches also had the highest number of baptisms of black men and women among Boston’s Congregational churches. Moreover, Old South admitted five black men and four black women to full membership, and Brattle Street admitted eleven black men and nine black women to membership. In general, church affiliation appealed to both black men and black women. For enslaved black men, and women in general, being a church member was one of the only socially sanctioned positions of status that they could attain.47 The pastors of these churches, including Reverends Joseph Sewall, Thomas Prince, William Cooper, and Benjamin Colman, supported the revivalisms of the 1740s and actively and energetically met with parishioners and sought to bring them into the church. Benjamin Colman was so intent on welcoming slaves into the church that in a 1740 sermon, he told whites and blacks alike that “Your Ministers welcome you to the Table of christ . . . [and that] the pious Master, who is christ’s Servant, will be glad to see his Negro above a Servant, a Brother at the lord’s Table with him.”48

TABLE 1.1. Black baptisms in Boston’s Congregational and Anglican churches, 1730–1749

Boston churches	Number of black baptisms	Total baptisms, 1730–49	Percentage of black baptisms
Brattle Street (Fourth) Church	46	1,134	4.06
Old South (Third) Church	35	1,158	3.02
New North (Fifth) Church	31	1,726	1.80
Second Church	22	623	3.53
First Church (Old Brick)	15	738	2.03
New Brick (Seventh) Church	9	593	1.54
West (Ninth) Church (1737–40)	8	263	3.04
New South (Sixth) Church	6	881	0.68
Hollis Street (Eighth) Church	3	313	0.96
King’s Chapel Anglican	9	574	1.57
Christ Church Anglican	55	1,010	5.44
Trinity Church Anglican (1738–49)	15	432	3.47
Total	254	9,445	2.69

The lay devotional activities that the pastors encouraged can explain the levels of black participation in these three churches. These activities also suggest that blacks and whites experienced interracial religious activities outside of Sunday services. The pastors at these three churches were more likely than some of their colleagues to visit the homes of parishioners and encourage religious societies. In these visits, the pastors asked enslaved servants about their religious beliefs, encouraged masters to educate their slaves in Christian doctrines, and catechized white as well as black children. Joseph Sewall stated in a 1716 sermon that “Heads of Families” should teach family members “the good Knowledge of the Lord” and “Catechise their Children and Servants.” Benjamin Colman went even further in a 1728 sermon, arguing that those fathers and masters who did not teach Christianity to their children, servants, and slaves risked eternal damnation. Colman warned, “His Offspring and Servants will rise up in Judgment against him, and accuse him, that he never instructed them by Word and Example in the Worship and Fear of God.” For these Christians, patriarchal privilege theoretically came with the ideal of patriarchal responsibility.49

These pastors encouraged religious meetings among pious parishioners, in which laymen and laywomen prayed, sang, and read scripture together and where ministers occasionally preached. These activities encouraged black participation in Boston’s churches. Black people, who heard the encouragements to meet privately for devotional activities, formed religious societies that complemented their attendance at regular church services (some of these societies included Indians and whites too). Reverends George Whitefield and Daniel Rogers each preached to assemblies or societies of black people in Boston. Later written accounts from enslaved and free blacks testify to the role that family devotions and conversations with white pastors had in their movement toward Christianity. Old South Church, Brattle Church, and New North Church baptized blacks before and after the Great Awakening, but they baptized and admitted a greater number of black people during the years 1740 to 1743, when revivalism was strongest in Boston. All these factors combined, including pastoral visitation, catechisms, fervent preaching, and private religious societies, led to 112 black people being baptized in these three churches compared to 63 black people being baptized in the other six Congregational churches. Evidence suggests that more black people were baptized in “New Light” Congregational churches than in “Old Light” churches, but the percentages of baptisms that were black people and black people’s rates of affiliation in Anglican churches complicate this narrative.50

The six other Congregational churches in Boston generally contrast with the three churches above because they had fewer black baptisms, but in one of them, the percentage of black baptism was relatively high. The ministers of all these churches did not participate in the revival movement or did not as energetically encourage devotional practice outside the church walls. In total, these six churches baptized sixty-three people of African descent between 1730 and 1749, with twenty-two of these baptisms occurring at Second Church. At Second Church, 3.53 percent of all baptisms were of black people, which was a relatively high percentage among Boston churches and suggests that this church was as attractive to black people as the “New Light” congregations.51 The absence of activist pastors and opposition to the changing religious culture of the Great Awakening in these six Congregational churches account for the fewer total baptisms and the lower numbers of black baptisms. Opposition or indifference from some people to black participation might have also existed in these churches. Boston Anglican minister Roger Price wrote in 1739 that the “baptizing of negroes is too much neglected,” which suggests that some Bostonians were at least indifferent to baptizing slaves, but all of Boston’s Congregational churches baptized some black people.52

Boston’s three Anglican churches also had significant variance in the number of black baptisms. King’s Chapel baptized nine black people, but Christ Church baptized fifty-five blacks between 1730 and 1749, which was 5.5 percent of the roughly one thousand total baptisms. Of these, twenty-five can be identified as female and twenty-two as male. Considering both the percentage and the absolute number of baptisms, Christ Church’s minister Timothy Cutler baptized more black people than any other Boston church (even though he was a consistent opponent of Whitefield and the revivals). It seems likely that black people were often in attendance at Christ Church’s services, including some who were never baptized. The claim that masters were hesitant to baptize their slaves does not seem to apply to this church. As was the case with northern Anglicans in general, an opportunity to gain an education and outreach by Reverend Cutler to enslaved blacks likely contributed to the high rate of black affiliation in this congregation.53

The blacks and Indians who joined the churches that opposed the new religious practices of the awakenings may not have needed enthusiastic revivalism to find meaning in Christianity, including the few who were baptized at the antirevivalist Hollis Street Church. Among the people affiliated with Hollis Street Church was Primus, an “Indian servant belonging to Hon. Anthony Stoddard,” baptized in 1738, and Dinah, “negro servant to Deacon Clough,” baptized in 1742.54 Some members of the Clough family were already members of this church when Dinah was baptized, but Stoddard and his family do not appear elsewhere in these church records. Primus had no obvious connection to this church, such as a master or employer who attended. In his case and for the free black people who affiliated, we can assume they chose to attend this particular church. Some of the blacks baptized at Hollis Street were free, including John Cuffee, a “free negro” who was baptized in 1746, and a free black child named Sarah Vingus, who was baptized on October 19, 1735.

Sarah Vingus was the seven-year-old daughter of John Vingus, and their affiliation with Hollis Street Church is best understood in a wider Atlantic context. In order to have his daughter baptized, John Vingus owned the covenant on the day she was baptized. Like many white parents in New England, the desire to have his child baptized was the immediate cause of Vingus’s official affiliation with this church. These church records describe John Vingus as “a free negro, baptized in his own country by a Romish priest, who also owned the covenant with us.” In all likelihood, “his own country” was somewhere in Africa, perhaps the Kingdom of Kongo, whereby Kongolese royalty and others had practiced Catholicism since the end of the fifteenth century. It is also possible that “his own country” could have been a Spanish or Portuguese colony.55 If he came from Kongo, then John Vingus was likely raised as a Roman Catholic and baptized and catechized as such. We do not know when or under what circumstances he reached Boston, but he was there and was free since at least 1725, when he married Parthenia Barteno. They were listed as “free negroes” when married by Peter Thatcher, associate minister of the New North Church. Perhaps he crossed the Atlantic as a free person, or perhaps he was brought as a slave and regained his freedom. Whatever the case, it was important to him that his daughter be baptized, and he was willing to ascribe to the doctrines of this Protestant church in order to have it done. White Christians evidently judged him worthy of being in fellowship with them. These facts suggest that Vingus was a black man who valued access to Christian sacraments in a Congregational church.56

The inclusion of black people in Congregational churches was so ubiquitous that even pastors who publicly opposed revivalism, such as Charles Chauncy of First Church Boston and Ebenezer Gay at First Parish Hingham, baptized and admitted some blacks to their churches (both before and after the awakenings peaked).57 Chauncey was an ardent opponent of revivalism who famously complained that blacks and other people who “have no learning” were preaching in revival meetings. But opposition to revival practices was not the same as opposition to interracial churches, and 15 of the 738 baptisms (2.03 percent) from 1730 to 1749 at Chauncey’s church were of black people. Included in these baptisms were two children of an enslaved woman named Rose, who was owned by Nathaniel Byfield. Rose was baptized and admitted as a member, and two of her other children were baptized in 1729. Byfield purchased Rose from the West Indies in 1718, when she was about thirteen years old. Byfield, in his will, wrote that Rose “proved a faithful Servent, she hath with Great Pains & Diligence learned to Read & attained to Considerable knowledge of Religion, Concerning whom I am persuaded to Believe that she truly fears God, which obliges me to set her free from the Servitude she stands obliged to Me both by Purchase & Custom.” Although granting freedom to slaves was an uncommon practice in British Atlantic colonies, Byfield believed that Rose’s sincere Christian faith and faithful service entitled her and her children to freedom. She was freed in 1733, upon Byfield’s death. Was Rose surprised that her Christian faith led to emancipation, or had she deliberately leveraged religious devotion to gain concessions from Byfield? Had she prayed for both emancipation and salvation for her children for years before that moment? These are unanswerable questions, but it seems more likely than not that Rose valued her affiliation with this church. Her religious affiliation and experiences more resembled the experience of “godly walkers” than later Whitefieldarian converts.58

Even though blacks participated in most Congregational and Anglican churches in New England, there were still deterrents to their full participation, and white Christians held diverse opinions regarding black and Indian Christians. Some masters forbade the baptism of their servants and slaves on the grounds that it might suggest the equality of blacks and whites or that Christianity might be used by blacks to obtain freedom, though historians appear to have overstated this opposition. Some masters were at least ambivalent about the baptism of slaves, for Reverend Roger Price complained in 1740 that “till masters can be persuaded to have a greater value for their own souls, we have but small hopes they will be very anxious about the salvation of their negroes.” On one occasion, for an ordination service in 1733, the Congregational church of Bradford, Connecticut, ordered that “no negro servant be admitted to enter ye meeting house” to leave plenty of room for white attendees.59

Perhaps to counter resistance among slaveholders, colonial laws tended to support the inclusion of blacks and Indians into New England churches. The Connecticut legislature in 1727 passed a law that directed masters and mistresses to attentively teach Indian servants to read English and to understand Christianity. The General Assembly in 1738 stated that infant slaves of Christian masters could be baptized on the authority of the master’s faith and that it was the duty of masters to educate their enslaved children about Christianity. While these laws were not uniformly followed, the force of law promoted the religious participation of blacks and Indians.60

Several of Connecticut’s churches, particularly those near the Mohegan, Pequot, and Western Niantic reservations had relatively high numbers of Indian participants, in addition to some black congregants. Indians were active in the Congregational churches of Groton, Stonington, New London, Lebanon, Old Lyme, Hebron, and Norwich, Connecticut. Some pastors in these towns had ministered directly to Indians since the 1720s. These pastors sought to bring Indians into their churches because they believed it was their religious duty to convert Indians and because missionary societies provided monetary incentives for doing so. Though Indians attended these churches occasionally before the awakenings, there was a considerable spike in Indian participation from 1741 to 1743, when the revivals peaked.61 Moreover, it was not simply “radical” revivalists who were laying the foundations for Indian affiliation in Congregational churches since several moderate or even conservative pastors also worked to teach Christianity to the Indians near their churches.

The Company for the Propagation of the Gospel in New England and the Parts Adjacent in America (known as the New England Company, or NEC) provided some ministers and congregations with substantial monetary support for ministering to Indians and encouraged churches to be inclusive. Money, it seems, helped make seats accessible to Indians in English meetinghouses. For example, in 1749, the NEC pledged one hundred pounds old tenure for building a new meetinghouse in Rochester, Massachusetts, and additional money for Reverend Thomas West’s salary because the church planned to make “part of the house for the use & service of the Indians.” They paid Reverend Daniel Lewis of Pembroke, Massachusetts, twenty pounds in 1732 because he had “for divers years instructed a Number of Indian families in P[raying] town & having brought them to attend the publick Worship at the Meetinghouse on Lords Days in conjunction with the English.” Ministers in Groton, Stonington, New London, and elsewhere were paid small sums for visiting Indian communities and because Indians attended their predominantly white congregations.62

The Indian and black populations in New England were clustered in different geographic locations during the eighteenth century, and these differences were a significant reason why Indians participated less uniformly in Congregational churches than did black people. Some Indians lived and worked in major cities, but the largest number of Indians resided in distinct communities and land reserves often at some distance from white population centers. Predominantly white churches with the greatest numbers of Indian participants tended to be located near Indian communities. At least forty-five Congregational churches baptized one or more Indians during the 1730s and 1740s. In many of these churches, only a small number of Indians were baptized, and they consisted mostly of Indian servants living in English households. Yet in the Congregational churches located nearest to Indian communities, dozens of Indians affiliated with these congregations. Thus, the only predominantly white churches in which Indians could find a critical mass of other Indians were those in English towns closest to distinct Indian communities. Overall, at least 289 Indians were baptized in Congregational churches between 1730 and 1749. Given the size of the Indian population and the often antagonistic relations between Indians and whites, this number of baptisms is considerable.63

The First Church of New London, where this chapter began, baptized Indian people who ranged from leading Mohegans to the most marginalized Indian servants. Mohegan sachem Benjamin Uncas II and seven of his family members joined this church and were baptized. Radical evangelists publicly criticized Adams as insufficiently evangelical, but Adams promoted a moderate form of revivalism that emphasized education as a means of converting people. In general, Indians did not suddenly become convinced of the truth of Christianity by revivalist preachers. In many cases, Indians learned the English language and Christian doctrine over a long period before some Indians publicly affiliated with a church. Ben Uncas II and his family strengthened their connection to Adams’s church when Uncas was seeking white support against a Mohegan faction dissatisfied with his leadership.64

At the opposite extreme, Adams fulfilled a traditional role for a town’s minister by seeking the repentance of a condemned prisoner, Katherine Garrett, who had been convicted of infanticide by a white, male jury in New London and sentenced to death. Garrett was Pequot, and in her childhood, she was sent to live as a servant with Reverend William Worthington of Old Saybrook. Indian children sometimes became live-in servants in white households to relieve their parents of the cost of raising them and in the hope of acquiring skills and English literacy, but colonial officials indentured other Indians. For some Indians and most blacks, exposure to Christianity was in the context of bonded labor to whites. After Garrett was arrested and sentenced, Adams sought to provide spiritual comfort and direction to the young Pequot woman. During the six months between her conviction and execution, Garrett regularly attended religious services. She was baptized on January 29, 1738, and admitted to communion in the First Church in New London on February 5, 1738.65 Her status as a condemned criminal made her full participation in this church atypical, but Garrett was far from the only Indian servant who affiliated with a predominantly white church.

In a few exceptional cases, such as the Congregational church in Natick, Massachusetts, during the 1730s, Indians and whites participated in churches on relatively equal terms. Because the church at Natick was financially supported as an Indian mission, whites showed a greater willingness to have an Indian serve in the leadership role of deacon along with two white deacons. Natick was part of a long history of Indian engagement with Christianity. It was established in 1650 as the first of fourteen Indian praying towns in which the colony guaranteed Indians land in exchange for their pursuit of Christian and “civilized” reforms under the guidance of missionary John Eliot. Indians also used the town as a means of maintaining some traditional cultural practices, Indian leadership, and control of land while under colonial pressure. Both white and Indian ministers led this congregation between 1660 and 1719. Meanwhile, more and more whites acquired land in Natick, both legally and illegally. A new Congregational church was organized in Natick in 1729 by the white minister Oliver Peabody, who was employed by the NEC. Although Peabody had a condescending attitude toward the Natick Indians, some Indians were members and participants in his church. Three Indian men and five white men, including Peabody, were the original members of the new church. Joseph Ephraim Sr., an Indian, was elected to the office of deacon soon thereafter, “by a fair Majority of Written Votes.” Peabody noted that “every English man in the Church Voted for him,” but the Indian members “Voted for English men not unanimously.” At this point, Natick’s white Christians seemed to acknowledge the primacy of the Indian identity of this church and accepted some Indian leadership therein, but such cooperation did not last. Between 1729 and his death in 1752, Peabody “Baptised about 161 Indians and 413 White persons.” The ratio of Indian members declined, and by 1749 only 25 Indians had been admitted to membership compared to 120 whites.66 The Natick church was a unique case in that whites and blacks gradually displaced a Christian Indian community.

Scores of blacks and Indians were regular participants in the Congregational and Anglican churches of New England in the 1730s and 1740s. As such, the colonial religious experiences of New England were influenced by the continual and active presence of people of African and Indian descent. They attended these churches, but, more significantly, many of them were baptized and took communion. They did so in a wide range of New England churches. Historians have long been aware of black and Indian affiliation in the “New Light” congregations that were most affected by the 1740s revival, in part, because of the types of sources they have privileged. The itinerant ministers and sympathetic pastors, such as George Whitefield, Daniel Rogers, Jonathan Edwards, and Eleazar Wheelock, deliberately sought out blacks and Indians and wrote about their participation in revivals.67 Relying heavily on the sources produced by revival participants, however, has led historians to neglect the black and Indian people who affiliated with churches before Whitefield’s arrival in New England and with churches who opposed the religious innovations of the early 1740s. When the full range of New England churches is considered over two decades, a more complex view of black and Indian peoples’ participation in churches and Christian sacraments emerges. Blacks and Indians participated in a broad range of church types and in most churches across New England.