The era of the American Revolution was a crucial turning point in race relations in northern churches. Throughout the American Revolutionary era from 1764 to 1790, a dramatic expansion of interracial worship occurred, especially in the Mid-Atlantic, despite the disruptions of the imperial crisis and Revolutionary War. Newly formed Methodist churches, an expanding number of Baptist churches, Dutch Reformed churches, and Presbyterian churches began to or increasingly included black members. Contrary to common perceptions, the development of white antislavery opinions did not commonly precede or cause this increase in black participation. Between 1791 and 1820, African Americans created separate black churches, especially in major cities, but the rise of independent black Christianity also coincided with increased black participation in predominantly white Dutch Reformed, Anglican, and Presbyterian churches. Both interracial and independent forms of black Christianity rose together in the Early Republic. Northeastern Indian churches also became interracial as blacks and Afro-Indians joined Indian communities.
Black participation in predominantly white churches swiftly declined between 1821 and 1850, and this decline affected race relations in the rest of northern society. In this period, antiblack violence peaked in northern cities, and segregation spread across northern society. In response to these developments, some Christian reformers argued that churches should be reintegrated, but more commonly, African Americans and Indians articulated radical, Christian critiques of white society and white Christians. The narrative arc of this story progresses from a surprising number of interracial churches in the mid-eighteenth century to an expansion of interracial churches during the era of the American Revolution and the Early Republic and finally to antebellum churches firmly divided along racial lines.
Church records, particularly lists of members and persons baptized, are the foundational source material for this book. These sources, written by white ministers or clerks, are the best and most reliable sources for determining levels of black and Indian participation in predominantly white churches. That said, some of the people who wrote church records did not use racial notations, so in some churches, it is more difficult to determine black or Indian participation levels. Whites, especially after 1780, increasingly described Indians or Afro-Indians as blacks, which also conceals some Indian participants in these churches. My analysis should not imply that the racial identifiers or categories used by white people necessarily matched the ways that black people and Indians identified themselves. Moreover, these sources and the records of white churches provide hardly any specific information regarding why blacks or Indians chose to affiliate with any given church. Despite the drawbacks of this information, by surveying large numbers of churches and identifying general trends, this book describes the religious choices and experiences of many northern blacks and Indians with detail and nuance. The choices and actions of thousands of blacks and Indians speak loudly about their religious experiences.19
Dividing the Faith does not make claims about the proportion of northern blacks or Indians who were Christians, although many of these people identified themselves as Christians. There is no reliable way to determine the portion of a city’s or colony’s black and Indian populations that were baptized since population data for the colonial period was so inconsistent and incomplete and since baptism was generally a once-in-a-lifetime event. Moreover, I do not assume that church attendance or participation in Christian rituals, such as baptism or communion, signifies anything concrete about the beliefs or doctrines held by the participant. Rituals can signify a wide range of meanings to the people who participate in them. Blacks and Indians practiced Christianity and adopted at least some of its theology, but they did not necessarily believe the same things as European Christians, and many of them incorporated Christianity into preexisting beliefs, rituals, and spiritual practices.20 Without a doubt, enslaved men and women born in Africa retained and continued to practice a range of religions from West Africa, including Islam and Catholicism, but this book does not seek to examine all the religious beliefs and practices of people of African descent in northern colonies. Rather, I focus on how and when black and Indian people affiliated with churches, as institutions, and what their affiliation can and cannot tell us. I am more concerned with the range of meanings that church affiliation held to black and Indian peoples than with their internal, private religious beliefs, although these two aspects of religion were necessarily inseparable.
I generally use the term “black” to describe people who self-identified or were identified by other people as being partially or wholly of African descent. Terms such as “negro,” “mulatto,” “black,” “African,” and “colored” appear in church records, but these terms are all problematic, and “African American” is anachronistic for the colonial period. I use the term “black” not because American racial categories are self-evident or logical. It is merely the least awkward of the terms that can be used to explore race relations and changes in racial categorizations in early America. I use the term “white” to describe people of mostly or entirely European ancestry, and this category is no less constructed, contested, and problematic than “black.” When possible, I identify Indians by their tribal nation or community names. Although modern Native Americans differ in their preference for the terms “Native American” or “Indian,” most northeastern Indian nations today use the term “Indian” because it is treaty language. It is the word used by white officials to make all the promises they then broke, and it appears in the written historical records that connect today’s Indigenous nations to their land.
The diversity evident in many eighteenth-century churches, and the changes over time in black and Indian participation in predominantly white churches, is a story that includes evidence of the tragic oppression of blacks and Indians in America. However, it also contains rarer moments in which religious beliefs challenged the prejudices of white northerners. For people more accustomed to thinking in terms of twentieth-century American churches, the rise of racially segregated northern churches may be a surprising history indeed.
1 / “Not of Whites Alone, but of Blacks Also”: Black, Indian, and European Protestants, 1730–1749
On the evening of Wednesday, October 29, 1738, church members and other congregants converged on the New London, Connecticut, meetinghouse to attend the midweek lecture service and to witness several baptisms. As many of the town’s inhabitants arrived, they took their assigned seats in the high-walled box pews or benches. Church seating was a contentious issue in New London, as it was in many New England towns. A committee determined where congregants sat and assigned pews based on people’s ability to pay rental fees as well as by factors including wealth, status, age, public service, family connections, gender, and race. There was such a high demand for seating that a second gallery was added above the first one. As with most services, the congregation sang psalms without instrumental accompaniment and listened to a well-prepared sermon by Reverend Eliphalet Adams.1
At each of the previous Wednesday gatherings in October, a child was baptized, but on this night, an adult named Phillis and four children named Ishmael, James, Ziba, and Sylvanus were to be baptized. At the appointed time, Phillis and the children proceeded toward the front of the church, likely descending narrow stairs from the galleries. They walked toward Reverend Adams, who was both the pastor of the First Church of Christ in New London and the person who held legal title to these five enslaved people of African descent. By law and custom, these slaves owed Adams their obedience and lifelong labor. Phillis stood in front of the congregation. She saw wealthier congregants nearest to her, but if she raised her eyes toward the galleries, she might have seen some of the other black people and Mohegan or Pequot Indians who attended this church. Phillis made a profession of faith and “owned the church covenant,” which is to say, she affirmed her understanding of and belief in the doctrines of Christianity and submitted herself to the oversight and discipline of the church members. She was always liable to be punished by her master,