CITY OF FAITHS

Historic painting of Old St. Patrick's Church

Begin at the foot of the island, where the harbor stretches out to the open sea, and where the first Europeans settled. As you stroll around, you come upon the solid foundations of the city's religious faiths in the brick and mortar of its earliest churches: Trinity, with its quiet, shady graveyard, a masterpiece amid the frenetic business of Wall Street.

A few blocks north, Old St. Peter's - the city's oldest Catholic parish, founded in 1785 - sits at the corner of Barclay and Church. In the shadow of the Manhattan Bridge, tucked away off Chatham Square, is the graveyard once a part of Shearith Israel, the only Jewish congregation in New York City between 1654 and 1825.

Venture into the boroughs, and you come across evidence of religions newer to the city: In Queens, for example, you come upon mosques, as well as Hindu and Buddhist temples, worshipers at which are part of a newer tapestry of faith within the city.

As the city gears up to welcome Pope Benedict on April 18th, we set out to look at the roots of religion in New York City, to see how the various faiths built themselves into the city -- into its sensibility and daily life.

Unlike its neighbors to the north, New York was never meant to be a religious outpost. From its earliest years, it was a trading corporation that was in business for, well, business. "The Dutch wanted a trading outpost," says Randall Ballmer, professor of American Religious History at Barnard College. "They were principally interested in commerce, however in 1624 they sent over the first minister, Jonas Michaelius."

The striking thing about that early colony, says Ballmer, is that it was characterized by a sensibility that would become the city's hallmark a few centuries later. "Already, at the very beginning," says Ballmer, "diversity was the animating factor. There were Dutch Reformed, Anglican, Lutherans, Quakers..."

A fight for religious freedom

That diversity would, very early on, spawn a protest against religious persecution: In 1657, when the Dutch governor, Peter Stuyvesant, tried to ban the Quakers, a group of farmers in Flushing -- none of them Quakers themselves -- penned a courageous defense of the persecuted Friends. Known as the Flushing Remonstrance, it was, says Ballmer, a forerunner of the First Amendment in its demand for religious freedom, and a fitting foundation for a community that, 200 years later would be a neighborhood where nationalities and religions mixed comfortably.

If the modern-day city has, over the past 200 years, been a haven for political refugees, that tradition, too, was struck early on. In 1654, a boatload of Jewish settlers arrived -- fleeing an Inquisition in Brazil -- and landed despite Stuyvesant's protests. When he tried to keep them from worshiping, he was overruled by his betters back in Amsterdam, and Shearith Israel became the first Jewish community in North America.

Among the other early refugees were Huguenots and Presbyterians. In fact, tracking the growth of religion in the city is partly a function of tracking immigration. "Immigration and diversity go hand in hand," says Michael Plekon, Coordinator of the Religion and Culture Program at Baruch College.

Immigration drives diversity

The first mass emigrants to arrive were the Irish; with them, they brought Catholicism. By 1830, there were some 35,000 of them in the city; and they had begun construction of their first cathedral, Old St. Patrick's on Mott Street. Later waves of immigration would bring more Catholics - the French, the Italians, the Poles.

In the 1890s and early 1900s, pogroms in Eastern Europe and Russia would send hundreds of thousands of Jews seeking a homeland to New York; throughout the century, Protestant churches would welcome immigrants from Britain, Germany, and Scandinavia, not to mention African-American migrants from the American South. In addition, the Greek Orthodox arrived; and Russian Orthodox. As the 20th century turned, yet more religions would join the mix: Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, as people from Africa, Asia, the Middle East and the Caribbean all moved into the city.

As the demographics changed, the religions themselves morphed and changed. Catholicism, once dominated by the European tradition, finds itself rejuvenated by the Latin American church; Judaism, once the preserve of Our Crowd German Jews also encompasses the Lubavitcher and Satmar sects; Protestantism, once the face of the WASP establishment, finds its growth within the black churches.

The Bully Pulpit

New York was never the hotbed of abolitionism that New England was, but among the preachers who took up the cause was Henry Ward Beecher, brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe. Just before and during the Civil War his church in Brooklyn Heights drew as many as 2500 people to hear him preach against the evils of slavery. But he didn't simply speak; he helped raise money to provide the rifles that supplied John Brown and his followers with their firepower; the guns became known as Beecher's Bibles.

A century later, African American ministers, like Adam Clayton Powell of the Abyssinian Baptist Church, would continue the fight for Civil Rights.

In the 1920s Harry Emerson Fosdick, of Riverside Church, took on the Fundamentalists, saying that the Bible was a record of the unfolding of God's will, not the literal Word of God. In the 1930s, Dorothy Day founded The Catholic Worker newspaper and championed the rights of the poor; Rabbi Stephen Wise spoke out against the dangers of Fascism. In the 1950s, Msgr. Fulton J. Sheen won an Emmy for warning of the perils of Communism.

During the years, the city has known virulent religious bigotry; the Know Nothing party of the 1830s and 1840s was violently anti-Catholic, and a glance at the Thomas Nast cartoons of the 1870s is a quick reminder of how that prejudice lingered. In some churches, black congregants were not welcome; and both Jews and African Americans faced discrimination on the job, at school, and in the housing market. Closer to our own day, the Crown Heights riots were an example of intra-community violence. "If there was one word that sums up religion in the city," says Plekon, "it would be 'struggle.' Struggle for freedom, struggle for tolerance."

But over the generations each tradition has managed to work itself into the warp and woof of the city's weave. Today, there are few New Yorkers who, on a summery evening, would refuse a stroll downtown to Little Italy, to join the feast of San Gennaro, and even fewer who begrudge the yearly celebration of St. Patrick.

There are plenty of New Yorkers who have never set foot inside a synagogue yet believe that the only way to start the morning is with lox and bagels. And there would be very few indeed who would refuse a chance to stand, cat or canary in hand, on a crisp early fall day, on the steps of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, staring at the goats, sheep - even llamas, and monkeys -- as they mill around outside the great cathedral, waiting for the moment of benediction -- a blessing for the animals, and their owners alike.

Related topic galleries: Immigration, Judaism, Harry Emerson Fosdick, Manhattan (New York City), National or Ethnic Minorities, Protestant, Refugee