into acceptance into the body politic. In societies so centered around churches, the inclusion of at least some Indians and blacks implicitly validated the existing social order; however, neither segregated seating nor other reminders of low status kept blacks and Indians from participating in northern Protestant churches.29
Several motives influenced black and Indian participation in Protestant churches. Some blacks and Indians found comfort and emotional support in the religion of the suffering Christ, even though they worshipped with men and women who exploited them. Available written accounts suggest that Christianity could be comforting, empowering, or life-enriching to some blacks and Indians, just as it was to some whites. Church membership carried a recognized social status that could be associated with social benefits. As was the case with white Christians, a sudden illness, natural disaster, childbirth, marriage, or an unpredicted event likely prompted black people to seek formal affiliation with a church. Religious rituals and church affiliation often coincided with periods of transition and major events in people’s life. Of course, some blacks and Indians considered the claims made by white Christians and wholeheartedly rejected Christianity.30
While there can be no simple or narrow explanation for Indian and black participation in colonial churches, they participated in so many congregations that their religious practices must be taken seriously. Black and Indian participation in Christian churches was not peripheral to northern religious life. Rather, the widespread participation of blacks and Indians in northern churches means that the quintessential churches of northern colonial societies were not simply white institutions. The presence of blacks and Indians in so many churches compelled some church leaders and religious organizations to address the conditions of these people, and the religious practices in northern colonies influenced slavery and race relations.31
Interracial Churches of New England
Reverend Josiah Cotton of the First Congregational Church in Providence, Rhode Island, like most of his colleagues, sought to minister to the blacks and Indians in his community and brought some of them into a formal relationship with the church. When he baptized and admitted blacks or Indians, furthermore, he articulated theological reasons for the inclusion of all people into the church. Many New England ministers felt obligated to work diligently and seek the conversion of all types of people in their community. Between 1730 and 1743, Cotton baptized two people of African descent and two Indian women. While this number is quite small, the scarcity of blacks and Indians did not necessarily undermine the importance of these events to the people involved. In January 1730, Cotton baptized “Elizabeth the Servant Child of Margaret Betty (Whose father was a Negro & Mother a White woman).” At the church service, Cotton preached from Genesis 17:13, which states that “He that is born in thy house, and he that is bought with thy money, must needs be circumcised.” Cotton likely argued that baptism for Christians, like circumcision for ancient Israel, was a rite that should apply to servants in Christian households. (Did Cotton or anyone else see the irony of talking about circumcision in relation to the baptism of a girl?) Elizabeth Anthony, “an Indian Woman,” was baptized and received as a church member in 1734. On December 26, 1742, in the context of widespread religious revivalism in New England, Cotton wrote that “Ann the Negro Woman Servant of Col. Jabez Bowen & Hannah Newfield a Free Indian Woman under the Cov[enant] & were both baptized, on which occasion I preached from 10 Acts 34, 35.” This text is another one that supports inclusivity in churches: “Then Peter opened his mouth, and said, of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons: But in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with him.” Although little else is known about these individuals, their inclusion in this church and Cotton’s sermons are noteworthy because Cotton ministered to black and Indian people long before and also during an intense period of revivalism in his congregation. Cotton supported and participated in the awakenings in 1741, but he was not a radical “New Light” minister, and he later turned against the new revival practices. A number of his congregants in 1743 accused him of being “not evangelical enough in his publick performances.” They claimed that Cotton opposed “the work of God’s spirit” and that he was “a preacher of damnable good works or doctrines,” and these critics seceded from Cotton’s church. Whether or not Cotton was “evangelical enough,” he used the same biblical texts as other ministers to justify baptizing blacks and Indians, and he brought some of them into his Congregational church.32
Most Congregational and Anglican churches in New England were multiracial during 1730 to 1749. In churches across Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts (including parts of Maine), and southern New Hampshire, blacks and Indians not only attended, but some were also baptized and accepted as members. In at least 121 Congregational churches, blacks and/or Indians affiliated as members or by being baptized between 1730 and 1749.33 These Congregational churches were led by pastors who embraced the new methods of Whitefieldarian revivalism, pastors who consistently opposed Whitefield and other itinerant preachers, and pastors who first embraced the awakenings but later lessened or reversed their support for the religious changes swelling across New England in the early 1740s. Incomplete church records and inconsistent racial notations in some original and transcribed records make estimating the number of congregations that did not baptize multiple black people difficult. For Massachusetts’s Congregational churches, my sample of church records included fourteen congregations whose records did not have multiple, identifiable black baptisms between 1730 and 1749.34
While some congregations in New England baptized only one or two blacks in a decade, other congregations baptized ten in a year. Since baptism usually occurred only once in a person’s life and since blacks constituted only a small portion of the population of rural New England towns, even a few black baptisms were significant in this context. Though blacks and Indians were most prevalent in the churches of port towns or communities located near Indian land reserves, they also appeared across areas settled by Europeans. Because so many Congregational and Anglican churches in New England baptized blacks and because social conventions encouraged widespread church attendance, almost all New England churches likely included black attendees at weekly worship services.35
In New England, both Anglican and Congregational churches had at least pretentions toward being established churches, and as religious establishments in these colonies, they sought to entail and represent the entirety of colonial society. Anglican parishes, of course, were part of the Church of England, the legally established form of Protestantism in England, but they did not receive tax support and were not prevalent enough across New England to fully constitute an established church there. Congregational churches were dissenters from the Church of England and therefore were not officially an established church (in Scotland, the Presbyterian Kirk was officially established). However, Congregational churches across New England received tax support and functioned, at least for public worship, as all-encompassing parishes.
Congregationalists were the most numerous and influential Christians in New England. Nearly every village, town, and city in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire had one or more Congregational church. Rhode Island was more heterogeneous than any other part of New England, with greater numbers of Baptists, Quakers, and Jews, but it still had Congregational churches and a few Anglican churches. Church buildings across most of New England were known as meetinghouses, and they served as the setting for local government. These churches were outgrowths of seventeenth-century Puritan churches, and they still maintained moderate to strict forms of Reformed Christianity (Calvinism). As the main public establishment in many towns, Congregational churches often sought to be relatively accessible to all nearby inhabitants. Congregationalists believed that every person in each town, regardless of social position, should attend weekly church services. Ministers’ understanding of the Bible and their desire to make godly societies inclined them to include all people in their congregations, but not every person who attended church services was considered a church member. Ministers encouraged people whose “godly walk” or “conversation” was consistent with their profession to join their church as a member.36
Most Congregational churches had two levels of membership: full members, who could take communion and vote in church affairs,
