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This chapter turns to the region's Dutch Reformed churches. It reviews the ways in which social power manifested within the church space, focusing in particular on the conditions of free and enslaved Black New Yorkers in these churches. The chapter argues that congregations' practices of selective admission to these spaces, exclusion from these buildings and church yards, and segregation within these spaces reinforced the social and racial hierarchies that supported slavery in their communities. It emphasizes that these churches and membership in them became tools of enforcing social power in these communities, which proved crucial in sustaining slavery. Ultimately, the chapter shows that enslaved people created alternative ways to continue religious worship when excluded from or segregated within these churches.

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