Читать книгу Dividing the Faith - Richard J. Boles - Страница 9

Often, both material and spiritual motives were present for the blacks and Indians who participated in these churches. Church services were opportunities to see other enslaved friends and family members dispersed across a town. Some churches provided educational opportunities that blacks and Indians alike sought after. In these contexts, being a church member carried a degree of social status, and Christianity could provide a positive identity for enslaved and dispossessed peoples. The help that sympathetic ministers could provide to Indians as they dealt with legal disputes with colonists incentivized some Indians who participated in these churches.

Blacks and Indians participated in a significant number of Protestant churches in northern mainland colonies, but participation in the sacraments of baptism and communion should not simply be understood as definitive evidence of conversion or belief. Rituals can signify a range of meanings to the people who participate in them. Given the context of colonial society and the unequal power dynamics involved, blacks and Indians in these churches were not free actors. Slave owners often limited slaves’ choices, and church attendance was compulsory for some slaves and servants. Black and Indian participation in these churches justified the existing social hierarchy and their low status in it. But, to the extent that enslaved people made choices within the institution of slavery or negotiated with their oppressors, some enslaved black people chose baptism and church membership for themselves or their children. Church affiliation could both support the social hierarchy and hold meaning and significance to the people who participated.15

Sometimes white masters applied great pressure and violence to compel slaves to adopt certain behaviors, and some masters required their slaves to attend church. Reverend James MacSparran of St. Paul’s Anglican Church in Narragansett, Rhode Island, noted in his diary that he gave his slave “Maroca one or two Lashes for receiving Presents from Mingo,” a male slave. MacSparran called Maroca a Christian, but he complained that she “seems not concerned about her soul nor minds her promise of chastity.” In this case, MacSparran used means ranging from violence to verbal coaxing to try to get Maroca to comply with the standard of behavior that he expected of this female Christian slave. Whites compelled enslaved men and women to labor without pay, and some people compelled slaves to attend church, listen to religious instruction, or adhere to Christian morality. Some masters used a variety of inducements to encourage slaves to seek baptism, whereas others prohibited their slaves from participating in churches.16

Throughout the colonial era, Protestant ministers routinely owned enslaved people, participated in their commodification, and asserted their possession of people in church records with phrases such as “my servant” or “my slave.” Reverend Jonathan Edwards personally traveled to Newport, Rhode Island, in 1731 to purchase his first enslaved person, who was a young woman about fourteen years of age. In the mid-1730s, the parish of the Congregational Church in York, Maine, raised 120 pounds to purchase a slave for the parish and Reverend Samuel Moody’s use. A few years after this purchase, the enslaved man was not meeting Moody’s expectations. The parish voted to “sell the Negro Man named Andrew belonging to the sd Parish at the best Advantage.” Not only did ministers and churches use the labor of enslaved people, but they also sometimes sought a financial advantage in selling them.17

Although slaveholders could compel enslaved people to attend church services, Protestant churches did not mandate baptism or church membership for any adult, whether white, black, or Indian. Anglican ministers were instructed to baptize their slaves who were “willing to receive baptism.”18 The theology and practices of these churches inclined them to restrict adult baptisms to people who publicly made a profession of their beliefs. Most Protestants stressed that baptism held no value apart from genuine belief (whether it was the faith of an individual or the faith of parents standing for a child). At least in theory, baptism as a physical act meant nothing without correct beliefs and the work of God in providing grace. Moreover, there are examples of masters who owned both baptized and unbaptized slaves. In December 1741, at the First Church of Abington, Massachusetts, a slave named Tony, who was owned by the minister, “Made a Confession of his former evil & sinful life & declared how God had met him & wrought upon him & was Baptized.” Tony was one of at least five slaves owned by Reverend Samuel Brown, but not all of Brown’s slaves were baptized, and only two became church members. As a slave-owning minister, Brown presumably tried to convince his slaves to profess faith and be baptized; however, church members listened to each person’s confession of sin, considered what God had “wrought upon” him or her, and then decided whether or not to baptize or admit each candidate.19

In some cases, slaves possessed wide latitude over their religious affiliation. In 1736, the Anglican minister Timothy Cutler of Christ Church in Boston described “a negro servant to a Dissenter, and in the prime of life, who, from great irregularities, is become a serious & somber man.” The owner of this slave was a Congregationalist (Dissenter), but this slave affiliated with the Church of England. This unnamed slave was likely active in the decision to practice Christianity in this Anglican church instead of a Congregational one. Likewise, an enslaved black man named Nero Benson, who was owned by the minister of the First Congregational Church in Framingham, Massachusetts, joined the Hopkinton Congregational Church in 1737. Nero Benson apparently chose this church over his master’s church because of a theological dispute. These two men, despite their status as slaves, influenced where and how they would participate in churches.20

A black slave named Andreas, or Ofodobendo Wooma, expressed a desire to join a Moravian church through baptism, and since Moravian communities were unique among Christians in recording the spiritual biographies of all church members, we can see in greater detail the negotiations and power dynamics involved in this enslaved man’s baptism. Andreas was both a church member and the property of the Moravian church at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, from 1746 to about 1771 (the church owned most of the community’s property). Andreas was born about 1729 in the Igbo nation in what is now southeastern Nigeria. After the death of his father, he was used by an older brother to secure a loan and was unfortunately ushered into white hands and the brutal international slave trade. Andreas crossed the Atlantic in bondage, and a Jewish merchant in New York purchased him in 1741.21

After about two years in New York, there was a prospect that he would again be sold, and the fear of being sold to a bad master compelled Andreas to pray. Andreas learned the Lord’s Prayer from neighbors, and he prayed: “O Lord, our neighbors said you were so good and you gave each man what he asks from you. If you will help me to a good master in this city, then I will love you for it.” A Moravian merchant named Thomas Noble purchased him. In the Noble household, Andreas learned to read and was told about Christian doctrines, some of which sounded untrue to him. In a remarkable passage from his autobiographical testimony, Andreas stated that the Moravian Brethren “often told me that our Savior had shed his blood for me and all black men and that He had as much love for me, and everyone, as for white people, which I did not believe. On the contrary, I thought that God only loved people who were important in the world, who possessed riches, and so forth.” Despite his skepticism, Andreas continued to learn about Christianity and went to school part-time. He had a New Testament and “read from it whenever [he] had the time and opportunity.” Andreas was often present during morning and evening family prayers.22

After a moment of crisis and distress in which he contemplated suicide, Andreas experienced a spiritual transformation. He stated that “the Savior’s love and mercy and his selfless passion and death made such an impression on my heart that I wished nothing so much as to become a genuine black offering to Jesus and a member of the congregation.” He requested baptism, but Noble hesitated at first. Some Moravians were uncomfortable with baptizing blacks even though their theology proclaimed that all people needed Christ’s redemption. Noble had recently left the Presbyterian Church, which tended to not baptize black people, so his Presbyterian heritage may have made him skeptical of baptizing his slave. At the same time, perhaps Noble wished to test Andreas’s faith before consenting to his baptism. Andreas met George Whitefield, the famous revival preacher, when Whitefield stayed with the Noble family in New York. Whitefield “once offered to baptize [him],” but Noble only permitted Andreas’s baptism months later. He traveled from New York to the Moravian settlement of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, met with pastor Nathanael Seidel, and was baptized on February 15, 1746, “into Jesus’ death by Br. Christian Rauch and named Andreas.” He took communion on the subsequent Sunday. The black woman whom Andreas eventually married, Magdalene, became a church member in 1748. Andreas spent the rest of his life with his Moravian brothers and sisters, working and worshipping along with the white church members. Other enslaved blacks in Bethlehem did not join the church or participate in the sacraments. Moravians baptized and admitted a small number of blacks to their church communities from the 1740s to the 1770s, especially ones such as Andreas, whose religious experiences led him to pursue admittance to their church.23

The participation of blacks and Indians in many of these churches did not necessarily mean that they adopted consistent Christian beliefs or converted. Conversion, especially when understood as a dramatic change in disposition or belief, is difficult to address in this context because most people who participated in these churches (and almost all blacks and Indians) left no written expressions to describe their experiences (Moravians were a major exception to this trend). Many of the blacks and Indians who attended or participated in these churches adopted elements of Christianity that made sense to them, but they did not necessarily abandon other beliefs that whites saw as inconsistent with European Christianity. Black and Indian Christianities in the colonial era were likely syncretic or transcultural for some. Men and women adopted and adapted Christianity in different ways, sometimes incorporating parts of Christianity with the beliefs and practices that they already possessed. Some Wampanoag, Mohegan, Narragansett, and Pequot peoples identified themselves as Christian Indians, and they defined both titles on their own terms. Blacks who were taken as slaves directly from Africa and Indians raised in Indian communities were likely to incorporate or syncretize Christian ideas with their already existing ones rather than wholly convert to new beliefs. Some African slaves brought to northern colonies were already practicing Christians. Across the Atlantic world, including parts of the Caribbean and West Africa, black people participated in Christian churches before arriving to British colonies. West Africans who were brought as slaves to America practiced Islam, Christianity, and a wide range of localized religious traditions, all of which had beliefs or practices that potentially resonated with the religious practices at British colonies.24

Conversely, black and Indian people who were raised since childhood solely or mostly among white Christians were more likely to adopt Christian beliefs and practices little different from those of white colonists. Clergymen wrote approvingly of the religious knowledge of some blacks and Indians. Mr. Usher, an Anglican missionary in Bristol, Rhode Island, noted in 1730 that “sundry negroes make application for baptism that were able to render a very good account of the hope that was in them, and their practices were generally agreeable to the principles of the Christian religion.” These black Christians and others like them knew Christian doctrines well enough to receive the approbation of white clergymen.25

For some black people, such as Flora from Ipswich, Massachusetts, their attachment to New England churches was personal and long-lasting. Flora was likely born in Ipswich in 1723 and was owned by a prominent local man named Thomas Choate. During a revival, her faith stirred, and she exhorted or preached during some of the revival meetings. The Congregational Church of Chebacco (or Fourth Church of Ipswich) was founded in 1746 by evangelicals who withdrew from Reverend Theophilus Pickering’s Congregational church, and this newly formed congregation admitted four blacks among the first twenty-two members. Flora became a full church member along with another “negro” named Binah, after publicly declaring her religious experiences before the congregation in June 1746. Within a short period after joining, however, she was required to speak again in front of the congregation. Her 1748 public confession of sin was recorded, and it provides an example of the faith of an early black Christian.26

Flora’s experience illustrates the theological views and personal commitment to a church of an enslaved New Englander. In her confession, Flora acknowledged how “spirituall Pride, Ingratitude, Unwatchfulness and Levity or Lightness” ultimately led her to fall into a worse but unnamed sin. She described the deep despair that engulfed her when she realized the extent of her rebelliousness and sin, and how she was freed from despair when “the pardoning Love of God again flowed into my Soul & caused my Heart to melt & flow with penetential streams.” She asked her fellow congregants for their forgiveness, and prayed that they would “Restore me to your Charity and Fellowship and the Privileges that I have forfitted, by my Fall.” Throughout the confession, Flora exhibited her knowledge of the Christian scriptures by interweaving biblical passages with her own phrases. After the confession was read twice to the congregation and several members asked her questions, the church voted to restore her to full membership status. She remained a member for the rest of her life.27

Despite sometimes maintaining a long-standing affiliation with a church, blacks and Indians in predominantly white churches did not participate on equal terms. Women of every race and poorer white colonists were not treated as equals to white men of higher status either, but skin color was a stark dividing line within churches. Rarely did predominantly white churches allow black men, Indian men, or any women to vote in church affairs. Prohibiting black men and Indian men from voting correlated with their exclusion from the body politic, but this exclusion may have also had the effect of gendering as female all the black men and Indian men who joined churches. Women were the largest category of church members who were usually excluded from voting, but black and Indian men could not claim the male privilege of voting either. Blacks and Indians who attended predominantly white churches usually could sit only in portions of the gallery, stairwells, or back of churches. Seating arrangements reflected the social hierarchy of the whole society, with the wealthiest people sitting in the best seats and paying the highest pew rents. At Old South Congregational Church in Boston, the church voted to have a person provide “oversight of the children & servants in the galleries” and “that in Honour to his Excellency our Governour there be a Canopy Erected over His Pew.” At the Congregational Church in Suffield, Massachusetts, in December 1733, the society “Voted, that the Hind flank seat in the upper Gallery on the North side . . . and that seat and that only be for ye Negroes to sit in.” Differences in status affected where people sat in church and were reinforced by the seating arrangements. In some cases, women and men also had separate seating areas, so wealth, skin color, age, marital status, and gender could all be factors in determining where people sat in church. Some Indians and blacks occasionally preached during this period, but no denomination ordained blacks or Indians between 1730 and 1749.28

Numerous blacks and Indians were motivated to attend churches despite substantial drawbacks and limitations that could come with their participation. Some white people, especially ministers, promoted the conversion of blacks and Indians to Christianity, but other white people were hostile to including blacks and Indians in their churches at all. Nearly all white people opposed any suggestion that blacks and Indians were their social equals. The constant use of words such as “negro” and “servant” in church records and sermons demonstrates the social distance that whites sought to maintain between themselves and black Christians. The conditions that led whites to identify black men and women as “negro” in the church records may have prevented some blacks from having access to the sacraments of communion. Some white colonists were deeply skeptical of the authenticity of black and Indian Christians, occasionally even asserting that Indianness or blackness were permanent barriers to conversion. In the 1730s and 1740s, black churchgoers did not cause white Christians to propose freeing Christian slaves. With very few exceptions, whites simply did not see slavery and Christianity as incompatible. Rather, the social hierarchy in church reflected and reinforced the social hierarchy outside of it. The acceptance of blacks and Indians in churches was often conditional or limited and certainly did not translate into acceptance into the body politic. In societies so centered around churches, the inclusion of at least some Indians and blacks implicitly validated the existing social order; however, neither segregated seating nor other reminders of low status kept blacks and Indians from participating in northern Protestant churches.29

Several motives influenced black and Indian participation in Protestant churches. Some blacks and Indians found comfort and emotional support in the religion of the suffering Christ, even though they worshipped with men and women who exploited them. Available written accounts suggest that Christianity could be comforting, empowering, or life-enriching to some blacks and Indians, just as it was to some whites. Church membership carried a recognized social status that could be associated with social benefits. As was the case with white Christians, a sudden illness, natural disaster, childbirth, marriage, or an unpredicted event likely prompted black people to seek formal affiliation with a church. Religious rituals and church affiliation often coincided with periods of transition and major events in people’s life. Of course, some blacks and Indians considered the claims made by white Christians and wholeheartedly rejected Christianity.30

While there can be no simple or narrow explanation for Indian and black participation in colonial churches, they participated in so many congregations that their religious practices must be taken seriously. Black and Indian participation in Christian churches was not peripheral to northern religious life. Rather, the widespread participation of blacks and Indians in northern churches means that the quintessential churches of northern colonial societies were not simply white institutions. The presence of blacks and Indians in so many churches compelled some church leaders and religious organizations to address the conditions of these people, and the religious practices in northern colonies influenced slavery and race relations.31