“A policeman with religion”: Chaplaincy in the New York Police Department, 1906–1939

ABSTRACT This article details the early twentieth-century emergence of chaplains in the New York Police Department (NYPD), the first police chaplains in the United States. Chaplains would eventually be seen as a crucial part of many American institutions, including the military and law enforcement, but initially the prospect of chaplains in the NYPD seemed strange, even a joke. Through attention to newspapers, published city records, and denominational publications, this article argues that police chaplains emerged when they did because the role helped the NYPD address two problems that were top of mind for its critics as it attempted to modernize and professionalize: officer misconduct and the department’s fraught relationship with certain religious communities. However, it also argues that chaplaincy roles offered a way for the NYPD to address these problems from within and on its own political and racial terms. These appointments bolstered the power of the department even as they cemented the link of police to emerging “tri-faith” conceptions of American religion.