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.