<P> During the Second Great Awakening, new Protestant denominations emerged such as Adventism, the Restoration Movement, and groups such as Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormonism . While the First Great Awakening was centered on reviving the spirituality of established congregations, the Second focused on the unchurched and sought to instill in them a deep sense of personal salvation as experienced in revival meetings . </P> <P> The principal innovation produced by the revivals was the camp meeting . When assembled in a field or at the edge of a forest for a prolonged religious meeting, the participants transformed the site into a camp meeting . Singing and preaching were the main activities for several days . The revivals were often intense and created intense emotions . Some fell away but many if not most became permanent church members . The Methodists and Baptists made them one of the evangelical signatures of the denomination . </P> <P> The Christianity of the black population was grounded in evangelicalism . The Second Great Awakening has been called the "central and defining event in the development of Afro - Christianity ." During these revivals Baptists and Methodists converted large numbers of blacks . However, many were disappointed at the treatment they received from their fellow believers and at the backsliding in the commitment to abolish slavery that many white Baptists and Methodists had advocated immediately after the American Revolution . </P> <P> When their discontent could not be contained, forceful black leaders followed what was becoming an American habit--they formed new denominations . In 1787, Richard Allen and his colleagues in Philadelphia broke away from the Methodist Church and in 1815 founded the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church . </P>

How many christian denominations in the united states