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For researchers to dub your congregation a multiethnic church, the body can\u2019t include more than 80 percent of a given racial group. Today, only five percent of Protestant churches make this threshold. If we applied this same 80 percent metric to American denominations, few would be considered multiethnic. (Assemblies of God and the Seventh-day Adventist Church are key exceptions, according to 2015 Pew Research data.) This wouldn\u2019t have necessarily been the case in colonial America. In fact, for decades, whites and blacks (some who were enslaved and others who were free) worshiped at the same churches\u2014Methodist, Anglican, Presbyterian, and Baptist. Not all denominations\u2019 equally reached enslaved people with their message, says Eric Washington, a history professor at Calvin College. The \u201cstodgy\u201d and \u201cerudite\u201d tradition of Anglicanism didn\u2019t resonate as broadly\u2014although former Methodist Absalom Jones was ordained as the first African American Episcopalian priest by the end of the 18th century. In contrast, many African slaves were drawn to Methodism\u2019s theological emphasis on born-again conversions and total depravity and its preachers\u2019 open-air, multiethnic services, says Washington. \u201c[In Methodism,] there was no education requirement to be an exhorter or lay preacher,\u201d said Washington, who is also the director of Calvin\u2019s African and African Diaspora Studies. \u201cSo enslaved men who had a recognized gift to preach or exhort\u2014they were encouraged in that.\u201d But congregations began to split when denominations blocked African American men from taking on more official church leadership roles\u2014or, in the case of the Methodists, when church leaders threw out several of their black church members for praying in the \u201cwrong\u201d part of the church. Washington joined assistant editor Morgan Lee and editor-in-chief Mark Galli on Quick to Listen to discuss the Great Awakening\u2019s impact on African enslaved and free people, the overlap\u2014if any\u2014between conversion and emancipation, and the history of plantation churches.\nLearn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices