The Social Dimensions of Congregational Life in Colonial New York City

Abstract

PIOUS churchgoers have never figured prominently in accounts of colonial New York City. The city's reputation as an unruly arena in which people of diverse backgrounds contentiously vied for the rewards of the marketplace and the favors of government has led historians to depict New Yorkers as rarely pausing for spiritual refreshment. Yet this impression of a populace deficient in religious faith does not comport with evidence of church attendance or of the city's increasingly complex denominational makeup. Most residents belonged to a church during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and their churches played a critical role in ordering community life in New York's multiethnic and religiously pluralistic society. The city's religious pluralism poses a challenge to historians. Despite a substantial literature on individual churches, the relationship of New York's religious system to its social system remains largely unexplored. How did New York's religious structure evolve to respond to the needs of the various groups of Europeans who settled there? Given the latitude for religious expression that existed under English rule, what criteria did inhabitants employ in making choices among competing religious denominations? How did social class, ethnic identity, and family position influence religious preference? For the most part, colonial New York City's religious development has been charted from the writings of ministers, missionaries, and government officials.1 Yet explanations derived mainly from the statements of such leaders may distort our understanding of the processes of religious and cultural change. Supplementing literary evidence with behavioral evi-