For researchers to dub your congregation a multi-ethnic church, the body can’t 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 multi-ethnic. (Assemblies of God and the Seventh-day Adventist Church are key exceptions, according to 2015 Pew Research data.)
This wouldn’t 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—Methodist, Anglican, Presbyterian, and Baptist.
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