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 atypical, but Garrett was far from the only Indian servant who affiliated with a predominantly white church.
In a few exceptional cases, such as the Congregational church in Natick, Massachusetts, during the 1730s, Indians and whites participated in churches on relatively equal terms. Because the church at Natick was financially supported as an Indian mission, whites showed a greater willingness to have an Indian serve in the leadership role of deacon along with two white deacons. Natick was part of a long history of Indian engagement with Christianity. It was established in 1650 as the first of fourteen Indian praying towns in which the colony guaranteed Indians land in exchange for their pursuit of Christian and “civilized” reforms under the guidance of missionary John Eliot. Indians also used the town as a means of maintaining some traditional cultural practices, Indian leadership, and control of land while under colonial pressure. Both white and Indian ministers led this congregation between 1660 and 1719. Meanwhile, more and more whites acquired land in Natick, both legally and illegally. A new Congregational church was organized in Natick in 1729 by the white minister Oliver Peabody, who was employed by the NEC. Although Peabody had a condescending attitude toward the Natick Indians, some Indians were members and participants in his church. Three Indian men and five white men, including Peabody, were the original members of the new church. Joseph Ephraim Sr., an Indian, was elected to the office of deacon soon thereafter, “by a fair Majority of Written Votes.” Peabody noted that “every English man in the Church Voted for him,” but the Indian members “Voted for English men not unanimously.” At this point, Natick’s white Christians seemed to acknowledge the primacy of the Indian identity of this church and accepted some Indian leadership therein, but such cooperation did not last. Between 1729 and his death in 1752, Peabody “Baptised about 161 Indians and 413 White persons.” The ratio of Indian members declined, and by 1749 only 25 Indians had been admitted to membership compared to 120 whites.66 The Natick church was a unique case in that whites and blacks gradually displaced a Christian Indian community.
Scores of blacks and Indians were regular participants in the Congregational and Anglican churches of New England in the 1730s and 1740s. As such, the colonial religious experiences of New England were influenced by the continual and active presence of people of African and Indian descent. They attended these churches, but, more significantly, many of them were baptized and took communion. They did so in a wide range of New England churches. Historians have long been aware of black and Indian affiliation in the “New Light” congregations that were most affected by the 1740s revival, in part, because of the types of sources they have privileged. The itinerant ministers and sympathetic pastors, such as George Whitefield, Daniel Rogers, Jonathan Edwards, and Eleazar Wheelock, deliberately sought out blacks and Indians and wrote about their participation in revivals.67 Relying heavily on the sources produced by revival participants, however, has led historians to neglect the black and Indian people who affiliated with churches before Whitefield’s arrival in New England and with churches who opposed the religious innovations of the early 1740s. When the full range of New England churches is considered over two decades, a more complex view of black and Indian peoples’ participation in churches and Christian sacraments emerges. Blacks and Indians participated in a broad range of church types and in most churches across New England.
Mid-Atlantic Anglicans, Lutherans, and Moravians
The Mid-Atlantic colonies of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania had greater religious diversity than most of New England, but the churches of these colonies did not uniformly baptize black or Indian peoples. Anglican parishes were the most commonly interracial, followed by some Lutheran and Moravian congregations. Presbyterian and Reformed churches rarely baptized blacks before the Revolutionary era. The educational programs, pietism, and missional worldviews held by Anglicans, Lutherans, and Moravians help explain why they often sought out black congregants. The rules governing these denominations also made baptism relatively accessible to adult converts. The presence of blacks and Indians in worship services of these types of churches and their participation in the rituals of baptism, communion, and marriage were not directly tied to the revivalism of the Great Awakening.
Church of England clergy and congregations generally distrusted the awakenings as eccentric, leveling, and even devilish, though George Whitefield was an ordained Church of England clergyman. Although there were some evangelical-leaning Anglicans, they were in the minority. Some Anglican clergy campaigned passionately against revivalism.68 Black people valued the educational opportunities that Anglican churches offered, and Church of England parishes, including New York City’s Trinity Church, Staten Island’s Saint Andrew’s Church, Christ Church of Shrewsbury, New Jersey, Christ Church of Philadelphia, and Trinity Church of Oxford, Philadelphia, baptized numerous black people between 1730 and 1749.69
In addition to being baptized, some blacks and Indians took communion, were married by priests, and were buried under the auspices of the church. Their presence, as well as their selective adoption of Anglican Christianity, should not be underestimated because this
