Four Steeples over the City Streets. Kyle T. Bulthuis

city as a whole. John Street members apparently sought security and social stability in their class meetings: the revivals of this decade largely occurred uptown at the Bowery church, not at John Street. This religious conservatism also meant a greater willingness to associate with the new rich and entrepreneurial artisans and merchants who broke with older craft traditions. In contrast, more militant artisans went uptown to church. By bonding together, they highlighted the split emerging between social classes. As at Trinity, the upper-middling individuals who led John Street appear to have clung to the principle of a holistic, organic society.

      Silent Struggles: Blacks in New York Churches, and Their Early Steps to Independence

      Blacks had long worshiped at Trinity and John Street churches, where leading Episcopalians and Methodists had opposed slavery. This stance contrasted to some degree with most other churches in New York. During the 1790s, as both Trinity and John Street enjoyed increasing prestige and wealth, New York’s free black community grew extensively. Most members of both churches did not welcome free blacks as equal members, and continued to associate free blacks with slaves. Consequently, while blacks in these churches did not break from the larger institutions, they carved out separate spaces for worship, where they might enjoy their new status and occupy positions of leadership. While in other northern cities African, Revolutionary, or reform identities may have predated the black church, in New York it appears that black men first acted in the public sphere largely as black churchmen. That is, for them religious, and specifically denominational, identity came first.