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Dividing the Faith. Richard J. Boles
Читать онлайн.Название Dividing the Faith
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isbn 9781479801671
Автор произведения Richard J. Boles
Жанр Религия: прочее
Серия Early American Places
Издательство Ingram
The inclusion of black people in Congregational churches was so ubiquitous that even pastors who publicly opposed revivalism, such as Charles Chauncy of First Church Boston and Ebenezer Gay at First Parish Hingham, baptized and admitted some blacks to their churches (both before and after the awakenings peaked).57 Chauncey was an ardent opponent of revivalism who famously complained that blacks and other people who “have no learning” were preaching in revival meetings. But opposition to revival practices was not the same as opposition to interracial churches, and 15 of the 738 baptisms (2.03 percent) from 1730 to 1749 at Chauncey’s church were of black people. Included in these baptisms were two children of an enslaved woman named Rose, who was owned by Nathaniel Byfield. Rose was baptized and admitted as a member, and two of her other children were baptized in 1729. Byfield purchased Rose from the West Indies in 1718, when she was about thirteen years old. Byfield, in his will, wrote that Rose “proved a faithful Servent, she hath with Great Pains & Diligence learned to Read & attained to Considerable knowledge of Religion, Concerning whom I am persuaded to Believe that she truly fears God, which obliges me to set her free from the Servitude she stands obliged to Me both by Purchase & Custom.” Although granting freedom to slaves was an uncommon practice in British Atlantic colonies, Byfield believed that Rose’s sincere Christian faith and faithful service entitled her and her children to freedom. She was freed in 1733, upon Byfield’s death. Was Rose surprised that her Christian faith led to emancipation, or had she deliberately leveraged religious devotion to gain concessions from Byfield? Had she prayed for both emancipation and salvation for her children for years before that moment? These are unanswerable questions, but it seems more likely than not that Rose valued her affiliation with this church. Her religious affiliation and experiences more resembled the experience of “godly walkers” than later Whitefieldarian converts.58
Even though blacks participated in most Congregational and Anglican churches in New England, there were still deterrents to their full participation, and white Christians held diverse opinions regarding black and Indian Christians. Some masters forbade the baptism of their servants and slaves on the grounds that it might suggest the equality of blacks and whites or that Christianity might be used by blacks to obtain freedom, though historians appear to have overstated this opposition. Some masters were at least ambivalent about the baptism of slaves, for Reverend Roger Price complained in 1740 that “till masters can be persuaded to have a greater value for their own souls, we have but small hopes they will be very anxious about the salvation of their negroes.” On one occasion, for an ordination service in 1733, the Congregational church of Bradford, Connecticut, ordered that “no negro servant be admitted to enter ye meeting house” to leave plenty of room for white attendees.59
Perhaps to counter resistance among slaveholders, colonial laws tended to support the inclusion of blacks and Indians into New England churches. The Connecticut legislature in 1727 passed a law that directed masters and mistresses to attentively teach Indian servants to read English and to understand Christianity. The General Assembly in 1738 stated that infant slaves of Christian masters could be baptized on the authority of the master’s faith and that it was the duty of masters to educate their enslaved children about Christianity. While these laws were not uniformly followed, the force of law promoted the religious participation of blacks and Indians.60
Several of Connecticut’s churches, particularly those near the Mohegan, Pequot, and Western Niantic reservations had relatively high numbers of Indian participants, in addition to some black congregants. Indians were active in the Congregational churches of Groton, Stonington, New London, Lebanon, Old Lyme, Hebron, and Norwich, Connecticut. Some pastors in these towns had ministered directly to Indians since the 1720s. These pastors sought to bring Indians into their churches because they believed it was their religious duty to convert Indians and because missionary societies provided monetary incentives for doing so. Though Indians attended these churches occasionally before the awakenings, there was a considerable spike in Indian participation from 1741 to 1743, when the revivals peaked.61 Moreover, it was not simply “radical” revivalists who were laying the foundations for Indian affiliation in Congregational churches since several moderate or even conservative pastors also worked to teach Christianity to the Indians near their churches.
The Company for the Propagation of the Gospel in New England and the Parts Adjacent in America (known as the New England Company, or NEC) provided some ministers and congregations with substantial monetary support for ministering to Indians and encouraged churches to be inclusive. Money, it seems, helped make seats accessible to Indians in English meetinghouses. For example, in 1749, the NEC pledged one hundred pounds old tenure for building a new meetinghouse in Rochester, Massachusetts, and additional money for Reverend Thomas West’s salary because the church planned to make “part of the house for the use & service of the Indians.” They paid Reverend Daniel Lewis of Pembroke, Massachusetts, twenty pounds in 1732 because he had “for divers years instructed a Number of Indian families in P[raying] town & having brought them to attend the publick Worship at the Meetinghouse on Lords Days in conjunction with the English.” Ministers in Groton, Stonington, New London, and elsewhere were paid small sums for visiting Indian communities and because Indians attended their predominantly white congregations.62
The Indian and black populations in New England were clustered in different geographic locations during the eighteenth century, and these differences were a significant reason why Indians participated less uniformly in Congregational churches than did black people. Some Indians lived and worked in major cities, but the largest number of Indians resided in distinct communities and land reserves often at some distance from white population centers. Predominantly white churches with the greatest numbers of Indian participants tended to be located near Indian communities. At least forty-five Congregational churches baptized one or more Indians during the 1730s and 1740s. In many of these churches, only a small number of Indians were baptized, and they consisted mostly of Indian servants living in English households. Yet in the Congregational churches located nearest to Indian communities, dozens of Indians affiliated with these congregations. Thus, the only predominantly white churches in which Indians could find a critical mass of other Indians were those in English towns closest to distinct Indian communities. Overall, at least 289 Indians were baptized in Congregational churches between 1730 and 1749. Given the size of the Indian population and the often antagonistic relations between Indians and whites, this number of baptisms is considerable.63
The First Church of New London, where this chapter began, baptized Indian people who ranged from leading Mohegans to the most marginalized Indian servants. Mohegan sachem Benjamin Uncas II and seven of his family members joined this church and were baptized. Radical evangelists publicly criticized Adams as insufficiently evangelical, but Adams promoted a moderate form of revivalism that emphasized education as a means of converting people. In general, Indians did not suddenly become convinced of the truth of Christianity by revivalist preachers. In many cases, Indians learned the English language and Christian doctrine over a long period before some Indians publicly affiliated with a church. Ben Uncas II and his family strengthened their connection to Adams’s church when Uncas was seeking white support against a Mohegan faction dissatisfied with his leadership.64
At the opposite extreme, Adams fulfilled a traditional role for a town’s minister by seeking the repentance of a condemned prisoner, Katherine Garrett, who had been convicted of infanticide by a white, male jury in New London and sentenced to death. Garrett was Pequot, and in her childhood, she was sent to live as a servant with Reverend William Worthington of Old Saybrook. Indian children sometimes became live-in servants in white households to relieve their parents of the cost of raising them and in the hope of acquiring skills and English literacy, but colonial officials indentured other Indians. For some Indians and most blacks, exposure to Christianity was in the context of bonded labor to whites. After Garrett was arrested and sentenced, Adams sought to provide spiritual comfort and direction to the young Pequot woman. During the six months between her conviction and execution, Garrett regularly attended religious services. She was baptized on January 29, 1738, and admitted to communion in the First Church in New London on February 5, 1738.65 Her status as a condemned criminal made her full participation in this church