Dividing the Faith. Richard J. Boles

why these churches included blacks and Indians, even though Germans, in general, owned fewer slaves, and German churches were often less well established than other denominations.

      Throughout New England, most Congregational churches and most Church of England parishes were interracial religious communities between 1730 and 1749. Blacks and Indians regularly participated in these churches as attendees and through the rituals of baptism and communion. The presence of blacks and Indians in all these types of churches was not solely the result of Great Awakening revivals because they participated in churches before the Great Awakening began and were participants in churches whose leadership emphatically opposed the Great Awakening. Rather, blacks and Indians found various types of Protestant Christianity appealing for the spiritual and material benefits they could confer. In the middle of the eighteenth century, many of these trends continued. However, European exploitations of Indians and blacks also strained the dynamics in these churches, leading to conflicts and even the dissolution of some interracial religious communities as Indians increasingly opted for separate churches in the 1750s.