The 1812 Methodist Episcopal Church general conference in New York City proved contentious. In his journal entry of May 17, Bishop Francis Asbury recorded that the conference participants hotly debated the power of the denomination's bishops, particularly regarding their unchecked right to appoint lesser ministers to positions of authority. While spirited, the disagreements did not deeply divide the contestants. That evening Asbury ate dinner with seventeen ministers, many of whom had fought on opposite sites. Asbury commented, “We should thank God we are not at war with each other, as are the Episcopalians, with the pen and the press as their weapons of warfare.”Footnote ¹

The previous year a great pamphlet war had engulfed New York City's Episcopalians regarding the appointment of an assistant bishop. The dispute dominated events at Trinity Church, the city's flagship parish, leading to the ouster of several vestrymen and the dismissal of an assistant minister. But Asbury's fervent hope for harmony within his own flock proved short-lived. By decade's end Asbury was dead, and New York City's Methodists divided over issues of the power of the ministers and control over congregational property. A working-class, uptown contingent formed the Methodist Society, prizing its democratic independence from the church's wealthier elites. This conflict among white church leaders contributed to the departure of the city's African Methodists, who found few ministers willing to champion their rights in the dispute. Frustrated by a lack of opportunities for leadership, leading black Methodists formed the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church in New York, achieving denominational independence in 1822.

The conflicts in these three New York churches paralleled church conflicts nationwide. In the early Republic national denominations and local congregations suffered multiple schisms and divisions. Some historians attribute such battles to the effects of the American Revolution, noting that politicized struggles wracked social and civic institutions as well as churches.Footnote ² Other scholars have analyzed the social and class divisions of the contending parties, arguing that, attracted to evangelical morality, entrepreneurial capitalists drove the schisms.Footnote ³

In this study I examine three local cases of division occurring in the second two decades of the nineteenth century in New York City. The local and personal connections at play in these congregational conflicts help fully illustrate the process of schism that occurred in American churches. Within the early Republic city, expansive urban growth fed social tensions, which shattered church leaders' attempts at control and unity. Churches ultimately resolved these local divisions by affirming an ultra-local identity—victory accompanied each side that had a clearer institutional identity and more professional clergy. The clarification of institutional identity, however, created clearer boundary lines at the local level, and local congregations achieved greater autonomy and control than previously. By the end of this period churches were more professional and bureaucratized than before, but also locally focused: these developments occurred alongside but not completely within the political effects of the American Revolution or the economic effect of a Market Revolution.

The congregations examined here diverged in class and racial composition, but all shared institutional beginnings in the Anglican Church. Trinity Episcopal Church was the oldest. Formed in 1697 during the Crown's attempt to establish a Church of England in New York, throughout the eighteenth century Trinity represented stability and social prominence. The church owned great wealth, holding vast tracts of land that indicated its privilege. Some of the city's most prominent families sat in its pews. After the Revolution, the Loyalist sympathies of the church's ministers and many prominent laity disrupted its prominent position, but by 1810 Trinity had regained its elite status as a church of the rich and powerful.

Methodism had its origins in the Church of England. In 1768 John Street Methodist Chapel formed from members nominally affiliated with Trinity Church. As the first Methodist religious body in the Americas, important Methodist leaders from England paid visits there. In 1784 American Methodists independently organized as a denomination. By that decade's end, the city's inhabitants viewed John Street no longer as a fledgling chapel but as a church in its own right. Somewhat of an anomaly, John Street housed some of the town's wealthiest Methodists. Methodism generally attracted lower orders to its services, however, and farther uptown more working men attended the newer chapels there.

Both Episcopal and Methodist churches welcomed blacks to worship. But widespread racism in America made biracial worship difficult. The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, or Mother Zion, started, much like John Street, as an informal chapel where blacks held separate worship services beginning in 1796. By 1810 it had a separate meeting space but remained under the institutional authority of white Methodist church leaders. Black tradesmen and artisans led the church when white ministers were not present—as free and skilled workers, their middling status placed them at the top of the emerging black community.

The social landscape of the city shaped the politicized disputes that wracked these three congregations. In the 1810s the city suffered through war and recession, all the while expanding in population. Poorhouse rolls grew dramatically. Even so, economic opportunities continued to beckon, as many Americans abandoned their farms for the city. New York State's construction of the Erie Canal foreshadowed the promise of transformative wealth. Faced with daunting social problems and daring economic answers, the city's churchmen promoted their own grandiose aims, which spawned backlashes from within and without their congregations. This context of opportunity alongside social unrest frames the ecclesiastical conflicts that wrenched apart the churches.Footnote ⁴

I. Pen and Press as Weapons of Warfare: Episcopalian Elites Versus the Clergy on Bishops and Bible Societies

The Episcopalian war of papers that Asbury mentioned in his journal seems trivial today, for it only concerned the appointment of an assistant bishop. But the fierce and wide-ranging debate suggests that the issue cut far deeper than the nominal cause. The struggles centered on Trinity Episcopal parish, northern Episcopalianism's flagship church and a symbol of clerical prestige. Trinity often asserted authority beyond its local status: a large colonial-era land grant gave it control over great wealth. And the New York State diocese's first bishops were also head pastors at Trinity, symbolizing the intertwined power of local and regional church authorities.

In 1811, with New York Bishop Benjamin Moore's health failing, Episcopalian leaders nominated Trinity assistant minister John Henry Hobart to serve as assistant bishop to Moore. Hobart's Trinity colleague, Cave Jones, published a pamphlet objecting to Hobart's election. Jones did not object to Hobart's qualifications but to his character, which he called small-minded and vindictive. Jones recommended a more experienced, better tempered, and less partisan candidate for assistant bishop than Hobart.Footnote ⁵

Trinity's vestry censured Jones for publicly voicing his complaints, and John Henry Hobart ascended to the position of assistant bishop on May 29, 1811. Hobart immediately called a vestry meeting, which organized a council of ministers to fire Jones. Bishop Moore heard the case in November 1811 and released Jones from his contract with Trinity. Jones refused to resign and published another pamphlet that questioned Moore's authority. Jones argued that, since former bishop Samuel Provoost was still alive, Benjamin Moore was effectively an assistant bishop with no right to hold termination hearings. Ignoring his retirement, Provoost jumped into the controversy and wrote Jones a letter counseling him to disregard his dismissal.Footnote ⁶

Rejecting Hobart's actions as punitive, some parishioners took Jones's side. From summer 1811 to spring 1812, Episcopal clergy and laity held a flurry of public meetings and penned scores of pamphlets. In April 1812, Jones's legal counselors agreed to arbitration with Trinity's vestry to settle the matter. The following October, New York's Supreme Court heard the case. The court upheld Jones's termination but awarded him $7500 plus his salary through his dismissal date on November 5, 1811.Footnote ⁷

During these events, pamphleteers debated a range of issues: who was truly bishop; the relationship between Trinity, its chapels, and the city's other Episcopal churches; the right of parishioners to protest clerical actions or clergy to hold termination meetings; and the efficacy of Hobart's own ordination.Footnote ⁸ To modern sensibilities the voluminous exchanges seem a tempest in a teapot. Indeed, church historians have dismissed the Hobart-Jones dispute as a conflict of personality.Footnote ⁹ But the battles reveal larger divisions over social privilege and clerical control.

Hobart led Episcopal scholars in formulating a High Church theology that championed Episcopalian superiority and separation from other Protestant denominations. This theology emphasized the apostolic succession of the church's bishops: the continuity of church leaders from the time of Christ to the present. In the early Republic, High Church theology contained a unique historical context that differed from past Anglican thought. The American Revolution irrevocably severed ties between church and state. The church thus rejected all trappings of establishment and instead acted as a sacramental haven in a lost world. Hobart's vision broke with the eighteenth-century practice that allowed leading laity to run the church. In return, the clergy made few claims on the secular world in which the laity worked and lived. Although politically quietist, the High Church vision demanded that the laity eschew social activities that polluted the apostolic church's purity. High Church clergy specifically denounced ecumenical missions, for they entailed cooperation with impure sects.Footnote ¹⁰

Hobart's theology carried social ramifications, for groups in the Jones case took sides based on their reactions to the High Church platform. Most clergy supported Hobart. Clergymen comprised nearly half of the witnesses for Hobart in his court case. These included Thomas Lyell, rector of Christ Church, whose Methodist background did not prevent him from taking an anti-Methodist High Church position. Trinity's notable exception, Abraham Beach, was an older minister who had served under Samuel Provoost, the previous bishop, in the 1780s.Footnote ¹¹

Most women also supported Hobart. Jones's lawyers asked witnesses to provide the names of pro- and anti-Hobart congregants. No witness listed a female congregant supporting Jones, whereas half of Hobart's known supporters were women. Peter Augustus Jay wrote that a majority of Trinity's congregants refused to hear Jones preach. According to the communicant lists, most of these disgruntled congregants were women. As some historians have revealed in other studies, under a strong clergy, women's membership outpaced men's while powerful lay domination led to a more balanced sex ratio. As a proponent of a robust High Church theology, Hobart's activism may have suppressed male membership. His enthusiasm did not affect female membership: Hobart's High Church vision led a pious woman like Elizabeth Seton to great spiritual heights. Seton eventually converted to Roman Catholicism and became the first American-born saint in the Catholic Church, but Hobart first stirred her spiritual experience.Footnote ¹²

By contrast, wealthy and prominent Episcopalian men led the opposition to Hobart. One quarter of the men who signed public resolutions supporting Jones also appeared on Edward Pessen's list of the 200 wealthiest New Yorkers in 1828, with property assessments of at least $50,000. Many belonged to Episcopal congregations with more evangelical leanings than High Church Trinity. Peter G. Stuyvesant, for example, founded St. Mark's, the city's second Episcopal parish incorporated independently of Trinity. Stuyvesant came from one of the oldest, most distinguished, and wealthiest families in the city, and he owned vast tracts of land just north of the city's boundary. Another Jones supporter and prominent non-Trinity Episcopalian vestryman, Nicholas Fish, had married Stuyvesant's sister Elizabeth and also held great wealth in real estate.Footnote ¹³

Other anti-Hobart partisans served on Trinity's vestry in the 1780s and 1790s, when the connections between a compliant clergy and strong laity were more secure. These included Thomas Farmar and James Farquhar, who organized a rally on Jones's behalf, and John Jay, who wrote a public letter supporting Jones. Their relationship with Samuel Provoost differed greatly from their experience with Hobart. Provoost became Trinity's rector after the Revolution because he was the only Whig priest in revolutionary New York, a position that won him lay support. He was related by marriage to many of his congregants. And he had offered sermons that were undeniably safe—that is, theologically orthodox and emotionally unchallenging. From old and established Episcopal families, the men who worked with Provoost in the 1790s preferred his easygoing authority within the church hierarchy.Footnote ¹⁴

Although charged with protecting the church's interests, even Trinity's vestry suffered divided loyalties and only tepidly supported the assistant bishop. Vestry members Frederick de Peyster and Francis Dominick signed the petition on Jones's behalf; both lost in the vestry elections of 1812. Garrit H. Van Wagenen testified on Jones's behalf at the trial; he also ended his term of service in 1812. Other vestry members remained neutral, unwilling to wholly support Hobart. John Jay's son, Peter Augustus Jay, wrote to his father that Jones should not be “sacrificed to Hobart's resentment.” And although Rufus King testified on Hobart's behalf, his fastidious legalistic testimony indicated a judiciously moderate position. King remained friends with Jones, and he fulfilled his duty to dismiss Jones with great reluctance. King's patronage later allowed Jones to gain employment in Brooklyn as a naval chaplain.Footnote ¹⁵

Although the Jones case receded, another pamphlet battle renewed the social fissures opened in the Hobart-Jones controversy. The issue concerned Episcopalian involvement in evangelical benevolent and reform societies. After 1800, individuals crossed Protestant denominational lines to organize benevolent societies. They sought to evangelize the nation's large unchurched populace. Such societies promoted ostensibly nondenominational ways for Christians to unite in action. Bible societies printed and distributed copies of the scriptures. Tract societies disseminated religious and moral reading materials to schools, churches, and interested individuals. Sunday school and educational societies funded ministers and teachers, and provided them with religious instructional materials. These groups began locally, but in the 1810s proponents called for national organizations to centralize their scattered efforts.Footnote ¹⁶

In 1816, the American Bible Society (ABS) formed, uniting disparate state-level Bible societies in a national organization based in New York City. New York had become America's publishing center, and most ABS board members resided in or near the city. Trinity vestryman Peter Jay praised the new Protestant unity that such an organization promised:

Jay argued that the ABS's central aim could smooth the nation's political and religious divisions. By distributing “the Holy Scriptures without note or comment,” unity could be achieved.Footnote ¹⁷

Hobart supported evangelization efforts, as long as they remained explicitly Anglican.Footnote ¹⁸ Hobart feared that ecumenical organizations were Trojan horses for anti-Episcopalian Presbyterians. In a message to New York's Episcopalians, Hobart opposed his laity's participation in the ABS. He argued that support for the ABS drew funds away from Episcopalian evangelizing efforts. Further, ABS support indirectly aided anti-Anglican Presbyterians, who joined the society in far greater numbers.Footnote ¹⁹

William Jay replied to Hobart's open letter with his own public response. Son of John and brother of Peter, William's family had never fully warmed to the High Church position. William lived outside the city and attended a parish in Bedford that his family long patronized personally, embodying a position similar to that of Episcopalian leaders at Trinity in the 1780s and 1790s. In his scornful pamphlet, Jay mocked Hobart's contention that Episcopalians needed the Book of Common Prayer, a liturgical order of worship, to interpret divine scripture. He also argued that support for the Episcopalian society diluted donations' effectiveness, for the cost of including prayer books with Bibles cut donations by half.Footnote ²⁰

As in the Jones case, reply followed reply. Jay's and Hobart's pamphlet skirmishes continued into the 1820s. As in the Jones controversy, the rhetoric turned personal and ugly. But unlike the Jones case, Hobart's adversaries did not withdraw from the church, and Hobart could not expel them. Both sides claimed victory, and ultimately both won church historians to their respective sides. Outside the narrow confines of ecclesiology, however, few historians found significance in the debates.Footnote ²¹

Social tensions at Trinity connect the seemingly unrelated battles in the Jones case with the disputes over joining benevolent societies. Laity who supported Jones in his complaint against Hobart openly broke with the High Church attempt to limit interdenominational involvement. They eagerly participated in the benevolent organizations.Footnote ²² While few in number, Trinity parishioners who joined the ABS were important church and community leaders. John Jay served as the society's nominal president in the 1820s, and Peter A. Jay served on its board of directors.Footnote ²³ Former Trinity vestrymen and Jones supporters Frederick de Peyster and George Warner also served on the board. A parishioner who had remained neutral in the Jones case, Matthew Clarkson, also joined the American Bible Society, as did John Watts, who served on Trinity's vestry and the American Bible Society board at the same time. The explicitly evangelical goals of the American Bible Society attracted ministers who had remained on the sidelines in the Jones case, including the former Methodist Thomas Lyell, and James Milnor, who later led Low Church opposition to Hobart's theology from St. George's parish.Footnote ²⁴

Ultimately, however, most of Trinity's ABS participants became marginalized in their own parish. Many, such as Frederick de Peyster or John Jay, came from the older revolutionary generation and died by 1830. Others joined new parishes, alternatives to Trinity. These included George Warner, who helped erect Trinity's first evangelical rival, Christ Church, and Peter Stuyvesant, who built Saint Mark's on family land. Thus Hobart's attempt to centralize church control under a High Church model of clerical supremacy met with partial success. Most of Trinity's parishioners obeyed their rector's High Church example. But not all New York City parishes emulated Trinity. Ministers and parishioners controlled their local parishes and refused to submit to the authority that Trinity's leaders expected. And after Hobart, New York diocesan bishops did not double as Trinity rectors, clearly drawing lines of authority for future disputes.

II. Primitive Simplicity or Learned Polish: Downtown and Uptown Methodists on Organization and Style

The case of Trinity Episcopal reveals that ecclesiastical battles often carried the seeds of social and personal conflicts within them. This was also true of New York City's Methodists, white and black, who suffered schisms in the late 1810s and early 1820s. In contrast to Episcopalian clerical battles, Methodist disputes involved the laity more directly. Methodist lay discontent drove the Stilwellite schism. As with Trinity, social tensions colored theological concerns. The conflict included issues of class resentment, for Methodists feared privilege and worldliness as signs of sin and spiritual decline.

New York City's Episcopalians blurred local and regional authority in the parish of Trinity Church, for their diocesan bishop also served as parish minister, and Trinity's wealth often funded projects for the diocese as a whole. New York Methodists also blended the boundary lines of authority. By 1810 the New York Methodists were in a single conference consisting of seven church congregations. A council of ministers ran the affairs of the conference as a whole. They did not represent any single congregation and in fact rotated among them in their preaching duties. As it was the oldest Methodist church in the city, some Methodists believed John Street held extra sway over the ministers; the resulting conflict between congregations expressed resentment over this structure.

In 1810 Methodist authorities sent the young minister Nathan Bangs to New York City, placing him in charge of the city circuit. As preacher-in-charge, Bangs served as the first among five equals who rotated among the city's seven churches. Bangs viewed the emotional excesses in the city's Methodist services with alarm: “I witnessed a spirit of pride, presumption, and bigotry, impatience of scriptural restraint and moderation, clapping of the hands, screaming, and even jumping, which marred and disgraced the work of God.” Bangs called a citywide meeting at which he read passages of the Methodist Discipline that insisted on order and decorum at worship services.Footnote ²⁵

Bangs held the disciplinary meeting at John Street, a church where fewer revivals took place. John Street's downtown congregation was composed largely of women, who as in the Episcopalian example tended to support the clergy. The church's location in the lower wards also meant that the Methodist society's wealthier individuals, including most of its merchants, called it home. In short, John Street members welcomed a message that stressed order and discipline. Bangs later wrote that the older preachers and older, more established members backed his actions.Footnote ²⁶

Bangs's biographer wrote that he succeeded in calming the society. Opposition proved to be brief and ineffectual, and nearly all the church's ministers backed his efforts. But not all the church's laity felt the same. In fact, the disagreement over order in the church grew into a greater dispute over wealth and display in the church. In this latter conflict Bangs's victory became ambiguous.Footnote ²⁷

The new dispute began inauspiciously. By 1818, John Street chapel needed repair. Led by wealthy members who attended that chapel, Methodist city trustees decided to build a larger building with greater ornamentation on the site. The call for ornamentation strikes the modern observer as modest, for the new building's neoclassical design exposed simple angles and straight lines. But to some Methodists, who gloried in the stories of Wesley's followers meeting in homes and in rigging lofts in the 1760s, the erection of a new building appeared presumptuous, as did hints that the new edifice would have a carpeted altar. Most distressing were rumors that the church would hold pews instead of seats. If the trustees charged pew rents, these Methodists feared that wealthy members would grow proud and become deaf to the gospel while poor congregants might be forced outside the building, unable to hear the message at all.Footnote ²⁸

While making plans for John Street's rebuilding, New York Methodist leaders proposed to change the society's accounting structure. Previously, congregations collected offerings for local expenses. Whatever remained they sent to the trustees, who distributed it to the ministers as salaries. In 1819, trustees requested that the churches send collections directly to a board of stewards, who forwarded the money to ministers' salaries. Because the New York Methodist society ran a deficit, the new arrangement required local congregations to request loans from the central board of trustees for their expenses.Footnote ²⁹

Many non-John Street Methodists linked the two issues together, finding a sinister combination in trustee proposals. While their congregations pinched pennies, the trustees and ministers increased the society's debt to rebuild an old chapel in grand fashion. One group of dissenters feared that Methodist preachers aimed to control all property, to deed the titles of the churches to the ownership of the General Conference. When Methodist leaders attempted to pass a bill in the state legislature to reorganize their proposed property arrangements, the discontented members left, denouncing resorting to secular laws as a “step toward popery.”Footnote ³⁰

Nathan Bangs labeled those departing discontents “uptown” members because of their location north of John Street. They also acquired the name Stilwellites after the minister who led them, William M. Stilwell.Footnote ³¹ In 1820, they incorporated themselves as the Methodist Society of New York. The very name elicited memories of primitive Methodism. The parent church's title “Episcopal” reflected an unwelcome hierarchy. Even the title “Church” referred to an institutionalism, formal and dead, that Stilwellites rejected in favor of the more organic term “society.”Footnote ³² The calls for simplicity and purity resonated with many.

About three hundred individuals joined the Stilwellites, including two former Methodist Episcopal Church trustees. No Stilwellite membership rolls survive, although I compiled a list of Stilwellites from indirect evidence.Footnote ³³ The list reveals a major preponderance toward laboring status. Nearly 90 percent of the group worked as artisans, cartmen, or unskilled laborers. The only professionals, a minister and a doctor, both served as the society's preachers. The only retailers were small dry-goods or grocer operations; none were upwardly aspiring merchants.Footnote ³⁴

The group's geographic organization was equally striking. The overwhelming majority of Stilwellite leaders came from two churches: Forsyth Street and Allen Street. Both lay close together, as Allen Street formed in 1810 as an outgrowth of Forsyth. Two other leaders attended churches north of the city. None attended the John Street Church downtown. Like their leaders, the group's rank and file lived near these same streets: Allen, Stanton, Forsyth, Division, Spring, Bowery, and Rivington. Although working class, Stilwellites were well established in the city. Over 85 percent of the male Stilwellites appear in a city directory. Few were so destitute or transient as to pass from the eyes of the directory tabulators.Footnote ³⁵

Stilwellite polity recalled an older Methodist vision of lay leadership. The laity worked closely with ministers to govern the society. The lay community chose new ministers, and class members chose their own leaders. The church order dictated that no rules could be altered without the consent of a majority of lay individuals. Peers, not ministers, solved internal disputes.Footnote ³⁶ Geography, not ministers, determined class composition. Paralleling early Methodism, women voted for new ministers. Husbands and wives also entered classes together, ending the rigid sex separation that had marked American Methodist practice since the Revolution.Footnote ³⁷

Although the Stilwellite Methodists occupied a vastly different social space than did Hobart's opponents at Trinity, both groups blurred denominational boundaries. Both opposed the clergy's aims toward greater ministerial oversight. At Trinity, leading men joined with leading men from other churches in ecumenical, nondenominational ventures that evangelized the lower orders. The uptown Methodists supported their own versions of ecumenicity: the Stilwellites balked at Methodist Episcopal Church attempts to limit the use of Methodist church buildings to Methodist services only. Stilwellites also held a close affinity for others outside orthodox Christian faith, particularly the Quakers. In an account of the group's origins, Samuel Stilwell praised the early Quakers for having “the piety and the simplicity of the Gospel.”Footnote ³⁸ And in the Friendly Visitor, William Stilwell stressed the common bonds uniting Christians, including ties between Quakers and Methodists. By comparison, Methodist standard-bearer Francis Asbury judged that the Quakers' unorthodoxy barred them from true salvation in Christ.Footnote ³⁹

Perhaps as many as two thousand Methodists in greater New York City agreed with Stilwellite principles. But in striving for primitive simplicity, Stilwellite sympathizers could not achieve organizational unity. Primitive Methodists failed to create a common institution at an 1826 conference and splintered into local, congregational gatherings.Footnote ⁴⁰ The Stilwellite movement did not last beyond the first generation. William Stilwell led his New York congregation until his death, when most members returned to the Methodist Episcopal Church.Footnote ⁴¹

The Stilwellites failed to win local and lay control over the city churches, but in the aftermath of the controversy Methodists increased local church authority as a way to manage their charges efficiently. Elders found it difficult to administer the city society as a whole, since the city's Methodists now numbered in the thousands, in more than a half-dozen congregations. Before 1820, New York preachers listed all classes (prayer meetings) or members together in indistinguishable groups. Each class attained a label as male or female, white or black, but lacked geographic specificity. Shortly after the Stilwellite secession, city ministers recorded classes by church location, linking each class to a specific congregation. In the following decade, local churches gained the control over their own finances that the Stilwellites unsuccessfully sought.Footnote ⁴²

The Stilwellite-John Street controversy illustrates the local nature of political and theological church battles. The uptown attempt to keep purity within the church against ostentatious displays of wealth, fashion, and aggressive ministerial authority found a willing audience in a specific geographic space. That space contained a self-conscious community of laborers whose ethic blended Methodist and laboring assumptions. Outside that space, however, Stilwellites gained little support and could not sustain a lasting denomination. A ministry committed to greater centralization won out over supporters of local control. But in the process, the ministry gave up at-large oversight, moving instead to a more congregational model.

Episcopalians and white Methodists disagreed over the amount of ministerial control, but the majority of each group sided with their ministry. The ministry's professional organization gave it an advantage over lay opponents, no matter how sincere or authentic they strove to be. A similar dynamic occurred in the black Methodist church, even as that group's ministry had only recently organized and had tenuous professional credentials. In the struggle, Mother Zion's ministers acquired professional accreditation even as they drew the boundaries of their church.

III. Conducted with Solemnity and Satisfaction: Black Methodists Negotiate Their Independence

In 1796, a group of black Methodist men successfully petitioned Methodist leaders for the right to hold worship meetings separate from the white-run church. In 1800 blacks erected a chapel, and in 1801 they incorporated their congregation independently of the white institution. But Mother Zion, as the New York congregation was later called, remained institutionally under the white church.Footnote ⁴³ White ministers regularly officiated at Mother Zion to ensure orderly worship. Because no black lay preachers had advanced to the position of elder, white ministers also officiated over sacraments of the Lord's Supper and baptism. This status of half-freedom for the black church existed for nearly two decades, when white Methodists' disputes forced black leaders to consider a new status for themselves and their church.

During the 1810s, black church leaders divided over the course their congregation should take. White New York Methodists wished for Mother Zion's ministers to remain with them, while Philadelphia's black church appealed to pan-African unity and asked the New York church to join them. Although some individuals found these appeals attractive, most of Zion's leaders rejected both paths. The allure of autonomous spiritual leadership swayed Zion to declare independence. Wishing to exercise their spiritual gifts without outside oversight, Zion's African Methodist leaders steered a course toward institutional autonomy.

The move toward independence did not occur immediately. Shortly after 1810, a dispute revealed discontent within the black Methodist church. Two of Zion's preachers left to build a new church with John Edwards, a white artisan and former Quaker. Abraham Thompson and June Scott had been senior ministers at Zion, the first to gain preaching licenses from white leaders. They had also actively aided in the formation of black benevolent organizations. The venture soon collapsed, apparently because Edwards exhibited signs of mental instability. Shortly afterward Thompson returned to Mother Zion, but Scott never returned.Footnote ⁴⁴

This dispute arose because the black church had not solved issues of financial independence and racial identity. Like many poorer Methodist churches, Mother Zion could not afford to pay its ministers. Edwards promised Thompson and Scott regular salaries. The offer of pay tempted those balancing duties to family and the ministry, especially those, like Thompson and Scott, with limited prospects of employment. Abraham Thompson appeared in the 1796 city directory as a laborer, and June Scott did not even appear in the 1795 or 1796 city directories, suggesting transient status.Footnote ⁴⁵

Less obvious in Edwards's proposal were intangible attractions of interracial worship. A former Quaker, Edwards willingly approached blacks to lead his new church. Perhaps Scott and Thompson, older men who had once experienced interracial worship, wished to recapture the earlier Methodist racial unity. Abraham Thompson was probably the first black man to join John Street's Methodist classes in 1785.Footnote ⁴⁶ As other blacks left the white church, Thompson lingered. When Francis Asbury granted black church leaders James Varick and William Hamilton the right to worship separately in 1796, Thompson remained in the white-run church.Footnote ⁴⁷

Racial unity had disappeared from the city's Methodist churches, which separated black and white classes in the 1780s. The creation of the African Methodist Zion church meant that worship services, as well as classes, divided into white and black sections. By the 1810s only three black classes met regularly under white leaders; two of them were at John Street, downtown.Footnote ⁴⁸ In the city churches, segregation had become the norm. Having no other biracial option in Manhattan, Abraham Thompson limped back to Mother Zion.Footnote ⁴⁹

In 1796, black leaders successfully established classes apart from white leadership. The departing blacks were dominated by artisans. Now in the 1810s, the artisanal community within Mother Zion pushed for full institutional independence. Many of Zion's ministers and lay leaders held skilled occupations. James Varick was a shoemaker and William Hamilton a carpenter. William Miller, who headed Zion's daughter church, Asbury, was a cabinetmaker.Footnote ⁵⁰

Black artisans possessed a greater confidence and stronger financial position than their unskilled colleagues. These characteristics translated into bolder political stances. Occupational differences did not automatically create differences in ideology—tobacconist Peter Williams, Sr., did not share his artisan brothers' radical faith, as he remained close to white church leaders. But the insecurity of non-artisan work led some African Methodists away from institutional independence. The promise of security in biracial worship tempted Abraham Thompson, a laborer. Another unskilled worker, exhorter George White, avoided political questions. White's unwillingness to grapple with slavery may have led to a divide with leaders like Hamilton, who promoted antislavery measures.Footnote ⁵¹

George White's example is instructive, for he remained on the margins at Zion and later broke with that body. Three times White approached white elders to request a promotion from the position of exhorter, which only allowed him to share his testimony, to local preacher, which enabled him to publicly interpret scripture passages. With little support from black leaders, however, White struggled to gain a foothold in the Methodist ministry. Unlike native New Yorkers James Varick and William Hamilton, White hailed from the South, having been freed in Virginia at his master's deathbed conversion. White held no skilled trade, unlike many other African Methodist leaders. As an itinerant preacher he gathered fruits from outside town to peddle upon his return to the city. He also worked as an oysterer, which required little initial skill.Footnote ⁵²

Two outside parties attempted to pull New York's African Methodist community in different directions in the late 1810s. Richard Allen's vision of a pan-African Methodist alliance attracted many Zionites. The emerging Stilwellite schism also caused many of Zion's members to reconsider their church's status in the white Methodist society. Zion emerged from these struggles with a new corporate, institutional independence and identity as a center of African Methodism in New York. This identity depended on established ministers, however, and caused others to leave the church. Like Trinity's opponents of Hobart and the Methodist Stilwellites, social position influenced religious allegiance.

Richard Allen founded Philadelphia's Bethel Church, the nation's first independent black Methodist church. Seeking to expand his denomination, Allen used Zion's discontented members to enter New York's mission field. In 1819, former Zionite William Lambert traveled to Philadelphia, where Allen ordained him to the position of traveling preacher. Lambert had unsuccessfully applied for the ministry from his New York brethren. Upon returning, he established a church under Allen's authority. George White aided Lambert in setting up Bethel Church on Mott Street. Because White and Lambert had been Zionites, New York's African Methodists took the affront personally. Zion's leaders forbade its ministers to preach at Bethel and denied Bethelites preaching privileges at Zion.Footnote ⁵³

Black Methodists temporarily forgot Allen's machinations when William Stilwell approached the Zionites in July 1820 with news of his group's departure. That year Stilwell had been the elder in charge of the African churches, and he hoped to induce the black church to join his fledgling denomination. Stilwell explained that the Methodist Episcopal Church had turned to the New York state legislature in an attempt to give the ministers more control over church property. The warning resonated with the African Methodists. Zion's charter held that its property belonged to its lay trustees, who were limited to members of the African race. If white ministers successfully seized Zion's holdings, it would destroy any power African Methodists had gained in the last quarter century. The white church continued to hold spiritual primacy, as its ministers determined which men could be ordained to preach and its elders periodically presided over black services. Blacks controlled their church property but little else.Footnote ⁵⁴

Mother Zion's leaders met with the Methodist Episcopal Church elders to confirm Stilwell's story. Their fears confirmed, the Zionites explored options that would allow their ministers, deacons in Methodist nomenclature, to be elevated to elders. Once raised to the status of elder, Mother Zion's leaders could ordain ministers on their own, not requiring approval from outside clergy and allowing for a self-perpetuating ministry. In the meantime, the Zionites asked Stilwell to preside over their church services for the next year. Even so, the break with the white church was not final; Zion's leaders continued to consult with the Methodist Episcopal Church for the next two years.Footnote ⁵⁵

Zion's leaders temporarily relaxed their animosity toward Richard Allen's group. Several Zion ministers attended Allen's Bethel Church services. Some sat near the altar behind the pulpit, lending Allen an unspoken yet powerful support. Zion's leading minister, James Varick, introduced Allen at a meeting, notwithstanding his earlier resolve to withhold fellowship to the Allenites. But the collegiality with Allen's group soon dissipated. The Zionites approached Allen to request that he promote their deacons to elder, but Allen refused unless they placed their church under his authority. As with Zion's initial break with the white church in the 1790s, New York's male African Methodists wished to “exercise their spiritual gifts,” to hold positions of prestige and control in their own church. In a subsequent congregational meeting the people rejected both union with Richard Allen's group and remaining under the authority of the white Methodists.Footnote ⁵⁶

Some Zionites considered leaving Methodism and approached Bishop Hobart at Trinity Episcopal Church to request ordination for their deacons. Abraham Thompson particularly opposed this move. Christopher Rush, later a bishop in the Zionite denomination, attributed this opposition to Thompson's belief that the Africans should not go to a white bishop given Allen's availability. Thompson, however, had earlier attempted to form a new church with a white artisan. Thompson may have chosen to remain loyal to the Methodist discipline. As Zion's oldest minister, Thompson held the closest ties to Zion's Methodist roots at John Street.Footnote ⁵⁷

Episcopalian ministers hesitated to support an independent black ministry and suggested the Zionites return to William Stilwell.Footnote ⁵⁸ Mother Zion's leaders gave audience to Stilwell, who had retreated from his earlier attempt to unite with New York's black Methodists. Now Stilwell only wished to persuade them that his status as elder was sufficient to ordain them as elders. Stilwell argued that no bishop, whether Methodist or Episcopal, was required. Nonetheless, the Methodist Episcopal Church again entered the picture, as Bishop William McKendree stated that he could not have elders ordained immediately but promised to look into the matter and have an answer for the Zionites at the next annual conference. Zion's members proceeded to elect Abraham Thompson and James Varick as elder candidates after the Sunday service on October 1, 1820. The two men then began their service as elders, yet awaited official ordination “by the hands of a proper authority.” The Methodist Episcopal Church stalled for another two years, until the African Methodists had had enough. Three Stilwellite ministers finally ordained Zion's elders in June 1822, thereby creating an independent black ministry.Footnote ⁵⁹

Mother Zion remained firmly Methodist in its steps toward independence and embraced a hierarchical understanding of Methodist church polity. Mother Zion's leaders insisted on gaining proper ordination from other ministers, preferably bishops, to become independent. Even in separation they followed an order and a discipline that implied an acceptance of spiritual hierarchy. Zion's independence differed from the Stilwellite vision of a democratic, egalitarian Christianity.Footnote ⁶⁰ Zion's leaders remained committed to a specific, traditional form of theology and order, with a denominational identity and a hierarchical ecclesiastical structure. Zion's independence reflected the ecclesiastical maneuverings of an acculturated, male, artisan leadership to retain its power within a recognizably Methodist tradition. Christopher Rush's description of the service that elected Varick and Thompson could apply to the entire episode: “The whole process was conducted with much apparent solemnity and satisfaction.”Footnote ⁶¹

In its path to independence, Zion followed clergy who steered a path between white control over their church and union with other black Methodists. Zion's ministers excluded black laity committed to interracial worship, including Peter Williams in an earlier episode and the two black classes who remained at John Street.Footnote ⁶² Abraham Thompson similarly found himself on the outside when he considered interracial cooperation in the 1810s. Zion's leaders also rejected black Methodists who sought a pan-African connection with Richard Allen's group. Zion's leaders slighted clergy like William Lambert and George White, who convinced few other black New York Methodists to join them. The desire of Mother Zion's existing ministers to preserve their own prestige and independence ensured a separate denominational status for the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. Such status remained orthodox, disciplined, and hierarchical in structure.