The author, in a compelling and careful census of African American and Indian churchgoers, mainly in the eighteenth century, fills a gap in what scholars of these religious communities have overlooked. He takes seemingly familiar examples about their religious presence in white ecclesial settings and aggregates them into a provocative rethinking of interracial interactions within churches in the early American North. Hence, he boldly asserts that interracial worship was the norm in this region during most of the 1700s. The existence of black and Indian parishioners in white congregations constructed church membership patterns that alter our view of American Protestant demography. Their autonomy and agency resulted in interracial worship on a scale that was more widespread across major Protestant bodies than has been previously acknowledged. This study upends “conventional wisdom” in the history of American Christianity that has obscured formal ecclesiastical activities of blacks and Indians before the rise of their independent congregations.
Throughout New England and the Middle Atlantic in the early eighteenth century, blacks, both slave and free, affiliated with congregations across the denominational spectrum. Initially, particular Anglican and Congregational churches led in receiving black parishioners. At different times in the 1700s, however, there were increases and decreases among various parishes in baptisms, marriages, and memberships. Baptists and Methodists joined Reformed and Presbyterian churches in attracting African Americans to their religious bodies. Their membership surges occurred later in the eighteenth century and coincided with a resurgence in Anglican evangelism and some decline among Congregationalists. Additionally, blacks joined with Indians in populating the pews of majority white congregations. Indians, however, already with an impressive history of both exposure and embrace of Christianity, developed in the mid-eighteenth century their own parishes that blacks sometimes attended. This diversity of congregations anchors the author's argument that interracial worship is an overlooked characteristic of the early American North.
A benchmark contribution of this volume lies in explaining the overlap between the rise of independent black churches and the existence of interracial parishes. The factors that led to the emergence of African American congregations, however, highlighted crucial deficiencies in interracial churches. Blacks who joined white congregations surely benefited from these affiliations. These amenities included support for manumission, educational opportunities, often through catechesis, and spiritually satisfying experiences in theology and liturgy. Moreover, there were familial, friendship, and associational ties and evangelical interactions with ministers and members.
Independent black churches, mainly in cities with a critical mass of African Americans capable of funding them, emerged in New York City, Philadelphia, Newport, and Boston. They benefited from the availability of licensed or ordained black clergy, access to legal recognition of their property, an escape from discriminatory treatment, and opportunities for lay leadership. This environment where black self-esteem was affirmed eluded African Americans who belonged to white churches. Even those white clergy who were receptive to black members, who shared with them the sacraments, and who mingled with them in the discharge of various ecclesial functions, could also be racist in other facets of their interracial interactions.
The author mentions Episcopal Bishop Benjamin Onderdonk of New York City, who married several black couples and otherwise embraced the African American members of white parishes. Nonetheless, Alexander Crummell, a black ordinand, was denied admission to General Theological Seminary largely because of the bishop's opposition. While the author refers to Onderdonk's acts of racial inclusivity, he is unmentioned in connection to Crummell's seminary exclusion. The election of bishops in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the ascension of ecclesial leaders in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, and their frontline advocacy for black rights stood in sharp contrast to Onderdonk's racial vacillation.
The precedent of interracial worship in the eighteenth century portended no decrease in societal developments in the early nineteenth century that restricted most African Americans to chattel slavery and a small minority of free persons to limited liberties. Such black polemicists as David Walker and such Indian critics as William Apess denounced the discrimination visited upon their peoples. Because Indian churches did not expand as broadly as black churches, the latter became the principal venues for protest and resistance. White churches that included blacks and Indians scarcely tolerated such insurgencies.
Interracial worship, while commonplace in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, requires from the author a significant clarification. What he cites as interracial is actually a persistence of small numbers dwarfed by majority white parishioners. Among select congregations, the numbers of blacks and Indians either were in the single digits or in the very low double digits. Never did they threaten the numerical superiority of whites. Viewed in the aggregate of several congregations over time, however, the numbers seemed impressive. In rare instances, the miniscule number of black and Indian ministers who served white congregations or participated in governance, while important, did not undermine white ecclesial authority. Hardly any of these interracial churches included a critical mass of blacks and Indians, and so few had enough members to spur a “tipping point” that stirred dramatic action from whites. While the small numbers of blacks and Indians often necessitated their segregation within the sanctuary, when substantive increases of blacks occurred, raw racist actions resulted. When this happened at St. George Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia, their physical mistreatment moved Richard Allen and Absalom Jones to bolt and found two separate black congregations. Nonetheless, this book still changes the discourse about black religion in the early American North. The prevalence of an interracial demography in a cross section of Protestant churches concomitant with the early presence of Indian churches and the rise of independent black churches enriches the scholarly discourse about the diverse makeup of Christianity in the colonial and early national period.
