at least while the supply of indentured servants remained steady, so there were fewer blacks among Germans than among English or Dutch colonists. Pennsylvania Germans’ pattern of eschewing slavery was similar to the practices of German colonists elsewhere. Lutherans in Ebenezer, Georgia, feared the effects of having enslaved people in their community, and they supported continuing the ban on slavery in Georgia. After 1750, when slavery was allowed into Georgia, Ebenezer Lutherans owned fewer enslaved people than was typical for southern communities. Some Germans in Pennsylvania and elsewhere owned slaves, but they owned fewer slaves on average than did English and Dutch colonists.81 Overall, circumstances particular to German colonists hedged against black and Indian participation in their churches.
Black people were baptized in a couple of Pennsylvania Lutheran churches before 1750; there was a higher concentration of black people in Philadelphia and eastern Pennsylvania than in the Pennsylvania countryside. At St. Michael’s & Zion Lutheran Church in Philadelphia, “Wilhelm Peter son of Peter & Mary (free negroes)” was baptized in 1747 (the earliest baptismal records available for this church are from 1745). At the Swedish Lutheran Church of St. Gabriel’s, located about forty-five miles northwest of Philadelphia in Berks County, four black children were baptized in 1741.82 Pennsylvania Lutherans baptized few blacks from 1730 to 1749, but the absence of blacks was mostly due to the low levels of slave ownership among German and Swedish migrants in Pennsylvania and not to a disposition to exclude blacks.
The Lutheran Church of New York, which included German, Dutch, and Scandinavian Lutherans, “was weak and struggling” until the first years of the eighteenth century, but it was accessible to blacks and Indians. Soon after his 1725 installment as the minister in New York, Reverend Wilhelm Christoph Berkenmeyer wrote to the Amsterdam Lutheran Consistory requesting their opinion about how to administer the rite of baptism. Lutherans, unlike Congregational churches, believed in the doctrine of “de necessitate baptismi,” whereby it is necessary to baptize children as soon as possible to avoid the possibility of children dying before their baptism. In the context of New York, with its many religious groups and nationalities, Berkenmeyer wanted the opinion of theologians and church officials in Europe as to how widely this doctrine applied. He wrote to ask about whether or not the rule that “pastors must baptize all children that are not baptized when they are requested to do so” applied to children “born of savage parents.”83
The Amsterdam Lutheran Consistory responded with statements that indicated the Lutheran stance on baptism; Lutheran churches should have, in theory, baptized some blacks and Indians. The Consistory argued that children should almost always be baptized, even if born out of wedlock, because “withholding baptism is a punishment for the child, for one deprives it meanwhile of the merits of Christ; one leaves it in a state of unbelief, since baptism is a means of planting faith in the hearts of children and thereby enabling them to accept Christ.” This recommendation to baptize children extended to Christians outside the Lutheran Church, including children of Reformed parents (Reformed churches, conversely, placed more limits on who could be baptized). The requirement to baptize regardless of the parents’ denomination did not, however, extend to indiscriminately baptizing Indians. The Consistory instructed that if Indian children were to “remain in the blindness of heathenism” with their parents, then they “cannot be baptized.” However, “if such children at and after their baptism become Christians, to be brought up and instructed by them, they can and must be baptized, as such children, by right of cession, adoption, gift or purchase, or being acquired in any other way, can and must be regarded as personal property.” In essence, Indians who professed belief were to be baptized, and Indian children raised in Christian households as slaves or servants were to be baptized under the authority of their master’s faith. The letter also implied that baptism did not change the enslaved status of bondsmen and bondswomen. While the Consistory did not discuss enslaved blacks, it is reasonable to assume that Lutheran pastors would have treated them similarly because both groups were held as servants or slaves and because Europeans believed both unconverted Indians and blacks were heathens. Berkenmeyer believed that blacks and Indians in Lutheran households should be baptized, and he baptized his three enslaved people.84
The 1735 constitution for New York and New Jersey Lutheran congregations, written by Berkenmeyer, instructed pastors to admit enslaved people to the church as long as they seemed sincerely interested in abiding by Christian morality and promised to continue serving their masters. When baptizing black people, the constitution says that “preachers should be careful that they [enslaved people] promise not to abuse their Christianity or break the bond of submission.” This concern reinforced the practice that dated from at least 1708 of requiring enslaved people to promise not to use baptism or church membership as arguments for emancipation.85
Black people were theoretically allowed to become communicants in Lutheran churches by the 1730s, and they certainly became communicants in later decades. At the Lutheran church in Hackensack, New Jersey, the church council, headed by Reverend Michael C. Knoll, in 1733 decided that, “If, by the grace of God, some Negroes would also be willing to come to catechetical instruction,” then they would be instructed with white children and white young adults in preparation to “be admitted to the Lord’s Supper.”86 The possibility of learning to read, as part of catechism lessons, likely appealed to black northerners.
The Lutheran churches in New York, according to Graham R. Hodges, were “sufficiently open to black membership as to be considered interracial communities,” and they seemed to attract free blacks particularly.87 At the Lutheran church in New York City, there were at least nineteen blacks baptized in the 1730s and 1740s. Among the individuals baptized were “Peter Jaksen, a free negro, about 20 years old”; “David, a negro slave of Niclaes Walther”; Abraham, the son of “Joseph Matthyeen and Annatje, free negreoes,” and Eva, the illegitimate child of “Maria Poppelsdorf, white and an unknown negro.” Some consensual sexual relations and even marriages between Germans and free black people occurred in the eighteenth century. These black individuals, some free and some enslaved, requested baptism at the Lutheran church and likely attended services there.88
The Moravian Church (Renewed Unity of Brethren), a mission-driven and pietistic Protestant sect from central Europe, also ministered to some blacks and Indians during the 1740s. The Moravians promoted emotional piety and focused on semi-communal living, heartfelt devotion to Christ, and worldwide missionary efforts. Moravians were engaged in missionary work to thousands of African slaves on the Danish Caribbean Island of St. Thomas by 1740.89 A group of Moravians from Saxony settled in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in 1740 to practice their religion without state harassment and to minister to Pennsylvania Indians. Eventually, by the 1760s, Moravians established five communities in New York, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut for Delaware, Mohican, and other Indians interested in Christianity. Missionary work at Indian villages, such as Shekomeko, New York, was a central component of the faith of these Christians. Like Anglicans, Moravians sometimes offered educational opportunities to enslaved people. Moravians also did not demand that their converts possess a high degree of religious knowledge or memorize doctrines before baptism, and Moravians sought to learn Indian languages and could be more accepting of traditional Indian practices than most English Protestants. All that was required of adults seeking baptism was a simple profession of faith, and as such, Moravians made this sacrament relatively accessible to blacks and Indians.90
In addition to the small number of black Moravians, including Andreas and Magdalene, Indians affiliated with Moravian Christianity in Pennsylvania, New York, and Connecticut, usually in Indian towns that were visited by missionaries. Several families of Delawares decided to be baptized by Moravians in the late 1740s and 1750s, and roughly sixty-six Delaware or Mohican women were baptized in 1749 alone. Delawares often felt pressures from growing white settlements and the more powerful Six Nations Iroquois (Haudenosaunee). Consequently, for some Delawares, Christian affiliation and missionaries were seen as means of maintaining community cohesion and local autonomy. The Moravian missionary town of Gnadenhütten, Pennsylvania, became an important site of Indian Christianity, but other Delawares were skeptical and disinterested in Moravian Christianity and white alliances.91
Moravian
