Dividing the Faith - Richard J. Boles Early American Places

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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

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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