(many of the congregations most affected by the awakenings dropped owning the covenant and “halfway” membership in the 1740s). Both types of members could be baptized and have their children and other young household members baptized. They were also both subject to church discipline. The halfway members joined by “owning the covenant,” attesting to a statement of faith, which was easier than the process of becoming a full member. Full or communing members usually had to share their profession of Reformed doctrine or their relation that attested to their personal experience of God’s work of salvation in their life. These professions or relations were usually shared with the pastor and existing church members, who determined whether to admit each person or not. Some congregations had relatively accessible membership rolls while other congregations sought to restrict membership, as much as possible, to the truly converted. Many regular attendees and devout parishioners in Congregational churches waited a long time—or refrained entirely—from fully joining their church because they were concerned about or feared taking communion in an unworthy manner.37
Despite its limitations, owning the covenant or halfway membership provided a formal place in church life and the community, and not a few blacks and Indians owned the covenant to received baptism. The original intention of the Halfway Covenant was not to provide a means for blacks or Indians to affiliate with churches, but by the 1740s, these people often affiliated with churches through this more accessible process. Servant or slave children could be baptized if their masters were members or halfway members—just as though the servant children were biological children. For example, on September 6, 1741, the First Congregational Church of Windsor, Connecticut, baptized a black person named John when he owned the covenant for himself and another named London, on account of his master’s profession. In most cases, masters who had enslaved children baptized on their account were full members.38
Though Church of England parishes in New England were few in number compared to the Congregational churches, the wealth of some parishioners and their location in port towns made them more influential than their numbers imply. Many Church of England parishioners were slaveholders who encouraged their slaves to come to church. At the very least, blacks were baptized at Anglican churches in Portsmouth, New Hampshire; Newburyport and Marblehead, Massachusetts; Boston’s three Anglican churches; and Rhode Island’s four oldest Anglican churches between 1730 and 1749. Some of these congregations also included Indians.39 At Trinity Church in Newport, Rhode Island, fifty-seven people were identified as “negro,” and two people were identified as “Indian” in the baptismal records of this era. In 1746, this church was described as a “large and increasing congregation, not of whites alone, but of blacks also; no less than twelve of the latter sort having been admitted members of it, by the holy sacrament of baptism, within twelve months.” Over this period, it was common in any given year 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
