Chapter XIV: Preaching Himself to Death
XIV
Preaching Himself to Death
Whitefield managed a fascinating relationship with the Church of England. He was too popular for them to throw him out, and he never gave them the excuse to do so. He had learned how to manage his public image in the 1740s and was far more sophisticated at media relations than anyone of his time. Although Whitefield spoke frankly regarding the Roman Catholic threat in sermons such as “Britain’s Mercies” and “A Short Address,” still having a loyalty to the Church of England, he treaded carefully on the American bishop issue. He struggled with the denomination indirectly. He showed loyalty to liberty by wresthng with bishops to preserve his right to preach freely and run his ministry the way he wanted, as an upstanding member of the Church of England. Whitefield squared off against Archbishop Secker in London as he sought to expand his orphanage school in Georgia with a college and seminary for ministers. Whitefield’s intent was to educate his orphans and train them to be leaders in the colony. He had already secured permission from Georgia’s governor to establish a college and had obtained land as well as the financing to erect buildings. Now, he only needed official permission from London to move forward. But seeing the opportunity to strengthen the Church of England cause, the archbishop required that the new college be controlled by them. Whitefield was unwilling to comply. Due to the broad-based financial support of Bethesda from his interdenominational community, Whitefield promised them that neither the Church of England nor the Georgian government would control the college. He argued to Secker that the headmaster of the college would likely be from the Church of England anyway, since that was the dominant organization in Georgia, but he wanted the college to have the power to choose, not the archbishop in London. The point was about freedom. The issue dragged on.
By November of 1767, Whitefield was at an impasse with the Church of England and he became pessimistic, “NONE but GOD knows what a concern lies upon me now, in respect to Bethesda … At present, as to this particular, I walk in darkness, and have no light.” In the winter of 1767 Whitefield took his request over Secker’s head to King George III, who promptly sent it back to the Church of England bishops for their recommendation. Archbishop Secker suggested to the king that the college’s head should be appointed by the Church of England and that extempore prayers should be disallowed. Defeated in his attempt to trump Secker and unwilling to give the Church of England any control, Whitefield decided to withdraw his request. Instead of a college, he established a “public academy,” or grammar school, to serve all of the people of Georgia. Insinuating that the archbishop may have too much influence on the king, Whitefield wrote Secker one last time announcing his change of plan, “And as your grace’s and his lordship’s influence will undoubtedly extend itself to others … I intend troubling your grace and his lordship no more about this so long depending concern.” Whitefield had abandoned his personal dream to establish a college rather than submit to the Church of England’s control. In its place, he built a school to teach the public to read and write, rather than a seminary to train ministers.
Stinging over his defeat and wishing his donors throughout America to know the details, Whitefield published his correspondence with Archbishop Secker. The publications strengthened revolutionary efforts against the British. The American press recognized that the struggle between Whitefield and the Church of England was part of their own. Understanding that common enemies indicate an alliance, colonial newspapers reprinted select portions of Whitefield’s letters to show the colonists how they had exercised arbitrary power over Whitefield and the supporters of the Bethesda college project. His struggle with Archbishop Secker demonstrated the depth to which Whitefield chose liberty over tyranny. Ultimately, colonists saw Whitefield’s clash with Secker over control of Bethesda college as just another instance of the Church of England’s plots to control colonial religion in general.
The following year, Whitefield again blew the whistle on arbitrary practices by the Church of England by publicizing the case of six students from Oxford University. According to the college administration, the students were guilty of extempore prayer and singing, so they were kicked out. The students could not just enroll in another college. Their dreams of education and a call to the ministry were dashed by the decision. Whitefield pointed out that they were really expelled for being methodists. Essentially, Oxford was squelching another “Holy Club” of the kind that nurtured Whitefield and the Wesleys in the 1730s. Whitefield published a letter to Dr. Durell, the vice-chancellor of Oxford, blasting him for the unjust decision, denouncing the unfairness of the official hearing, and warning of the negative publicity that Oxford and the Church of England would soon experience.
In “A Letter to the Reverend Dr Durell,” Whitefield considers the charges against the youths and systematically refutes those charges with scriptural examples and natural reasoning, citing examples of honored Anglicans and biblical characters guilty of the same “offences.” Whitefield, and all of London for that matter, was well aware of the bad habits of Oxford students and many of its teachers. So he opens the letter by pointing to the hypocrisy of expelling the students for prayer:
It is to be hoped, that as some have been expelled for extempore praying, we shall hear of some few others of a contrary stamp, being expelled for extempore swearing, which by all impartial judges must undoubtedly be acknowledged to be the greater crime of the two.
The Church of England was especially fearful of extempore prayer, recognizing that their liturgy powerfully shaped the public mind. The liturgy ensured that official views were consistently and repeatedly spoken aloud during times of prayer and worship. Extempore prayer and the singing of hymns, most likely hymns written by methodists, embodied other doctrinal ideas. The Church of England wished to stamp out these ideas in their ongoing war against methodism.
Whitefield asserted that their hearing was unfair, that the students were hissed at in the hall outside where their appeal was heard, and were treated worse than common criminals in London’s courts. Though he took great care to note the hypocrisy of Oxford’s decision and undermined their reasons for the expulsion, he did not speculate on their motive for doing so. There was no need to mention the obvious. Rather, Whitefield speculated on how news of the expulsion would harm the efforts to establish a bishop in America:
I fear it will follow, that a society, which since its first institution hath been looked upon as a society for propagating the Gospel, hath been all the while rather a society for propagating episcopacy in foreign parts: and if so, and if it ever should appear, that our Right Reverend Archbishops and Bishops do in the least countenance and encourage the unscriptural proceedings at Edmund-Hall, how must it increase the prejudices of our colonists, both in the islands and on the continent, against the establishment of episcopacy!
Again, Whitefield accuses his own denomination that their missionary branch’s sole purpose is to settle an American bishop. This added fuel to the fire in America. In Whitefield’s view, the SPG had evolved into a tyrannical group working to advance arbitrary Tory plots through the Church of England instead of being an honorable organization to further the Christian cause. The letter was reprinted in Boston immediately, and portions were reprinted in newspapers throughout America. For the colonists, Whitefield confirmed the Church of England’s true colors, providing evidence of their continued oppression of religious liberties. Yet Whitefield skillfully avoids any accusations of disloyalty to his denomination, appearing to serve long-term Church of England interests by asking them to change, to cease their hypocrisy, and to stop acting arbitrarily. Whitefield has again found a position that walks the line between rebelling against his denomination and supporting it by playing the the reformer. His writings affirm his loyalty, giving his enemies nothing with which to hang him. But his stand against their oppression endeared him to the American churches. The careful Whitefield provided no statements that could be used as evidence to accuse him of betraying the Church of England, but Americans could read between the lines. The fact that he made the issue public, both in England and America, and the fact that he connected it with the American bishop, makes it a direct confrontation to the Church of England’s arbitrary actions.
From 1760 to 1767, George III had labored to minimize Whig power in the British administration and set his own people in the House of Commons through the implementation of unreasonable methods of election. The Tories had regained control of England and desired to extend that control to the colonies, a fortress of Whig ideology. John Dickinson, an American revolutionary writer, helped colonists understand the imbalance of power between Parliament and the king, and he argued that the lion’s share should abide in Parliament. As long as the nature and distribution of power remained ambiguous, the various governmental entities of the empire had tolerated each other. But Dickinson brought open opposition by pointing out an uncomfortable fact: the arbitrary acts of George III’s Parliament were mismatched with American desires to protect liberty. Dickinson characterized the British Parliament and king as “radical innovators” in terms of interpreting and implementing the British legislative system, while he simultaneously argued that Americans were defending the tradition of liberty.”
Colonial leaders had once viewed themselves not as Americans, but as British citizens, members of the British “family.” Before 1765, to suggest they were not was radical and unnatural. This was a family that had provided a haven for true Christianity and fought wars against Rome and hell to retain religious freedom. But the arbitrary acts of the current British administration had irreparably damaged the relationship, causing colonists to feel like rejected children. From their perspective, this situation was unacceptable. How could the colonists who had so vigorously defended religious and civil liberty be out of God’s British family? The answer was simple, serious, and hard to swallow. George III, Parliament, and the Church of England were betraying God’s kingdom. Their oppressive and arbitrary acts were the proof.
No matter from what view they argued—economic, legal, natural rights, or the duties of leadership—each American writer and orator drew upon the Awakening logic. The Awakening had identified certain groups as in or out of God’s family and promoted conversion into that family by one’s attitude toward religious liberty. As a result, writers like Dickinson were able to draw upon two decades of family rhetoric. Each argument was derived from templates set in place a generation before, ready for logical action. Dickinson’s important writings held no exceptions that surpassed the logic established by the Awakening movement. The Awakening allowed Americans to judge certain actions as good or evil as colonial revolutionaries called upon deep beliefs embedded in the colonial mind to make their case.
Whitefield Burns Out
After fighting for repeal of the Stamp Act, after publishing the account of his struggle with the archbishop regarding his dream for a college, and after accusing Church of England leaders of arbitrary power, Whitefield, now 54, turned his attention toward his duties at his London chapel, where he often described the pulpit as his throne. In between bouts of illness that would leave him bedridden, Whitefield continued to preach on a regular schedule throughout England. In letters to friends he often wrote of death and his anticipation of a promotion to heaven. His wife died in August of 1768, about which he remarked, “I feel the loss of my right hand daily.”
Whitefield made one last American tour in 1769–1770, his seventh, which pushed his worn-out body too far. He arrived in Charleston, then traveled down to Bethesda where he began construction of two additional buildings for the public academy. His letters revealed an awareness of the deteriorating political situation, “O for a spirit of love and moderation on all sides, and on both sides the water!” Other than a few similar comments that show his desire for reconciliation, Whitefield did not publish anything that would stir the colonial crisis. Perhaps the necessity of taking sides at this point in the conflict was too difficult a decision for him, causing him to focus his efforts upon his first calling of winning sinners to Christ.
After spending the winter in the South and feeling better than he had in years, Whitefield departed for the North, arriving in Philadelphia in May. He planned to travel from town to town in the North throughout the summer and then return to Georgia in the fall, dodging the harsh weather in both areas. All the American churches welcomed him, even the Church of England, with no closed pulpits: “So many new as well as old doors are open, and so many invitations sent from various quarters, that I know not which way to turn myself.” Even thirty years after the Great Awakening, Whitefield was as popular as ever, drawing large crowds wherever he went. For him, the revival had never ended.
Since his health was temporarily strong, Whitefield began several rigorous preaching circuits, one of which was five hundred miles. He slowly worked his way further north, arriving in Boston in September of 1770, where he commented on the desire of New Englanders for him to stay there, “Never was the word received with greater eagerness than now.” But Whitefield also commented on the political unrest, writing, “The season is critical as to outward circumstances.” Whitefield attracted crowds in Boston equal to those of 1740, as both Tories and Whigs listened between the lines of his preaching to find support for their side of the political debate. Tories applauded Whitefield’s call to the Sons of Liberty and other such groups for submission to authority, while Whigs stressed his support of liberty. Although his events were well attended, his visit in 1770 did not generate much editorial comment in the newspapers because Whitefield just was not controversial anymore. In the final letter before his death, he commented on the British government’s move to dissolve the Massachusetts charter: “Poor New-England is much to be pitied; Boston people most of all. How falsely misrepresented! What a mercy, that our Christian charter cannot be dissolved!” These were among the last published words of Whitefield.
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During the early morning hours of September 30, 1770, an asthma attack ended George Whitefield’s life at age fifty-six in the home of a minister friend, Jonathan Parsons. His final act was exhorting believers as he stood on a staircase holding a candle. Speaking until the candle, a foreshadowing metaphor, burned down to the socket, he then retired to bed and suffered his attack at about five in the morning. Refusing to turn Whitefield’s body over to anyone else, Parsons entombed Whitefield in a chamber beneath his pulpit in the Presbyterian Church in Newburyport, Massachusetts. As news of his death spread, the public mourning across America was incredible. His funeral train was over a mile long with six thousand people following. Town criers went around calling out “Whitefield is dead.” Memorial services, attended by thousands, were conducted throughout the colonies as well as Great Britain. Numerous ministers wrote and published their memorial sermons. American papers suspended their coverage of political events to eulogize Whitefield.
Although Whitefield himself had longed for death, the tragic loss was especially painful for Americans. They had lost an agent of the Awakening and a person who offered an identity for an evolving society. But perhaps more significantly, they had lost a voice that had shaped America’s response to religious conflict, war with the French, arbitrary oppression, and power struggles with the powerful Church of England. Although Whitefield expressed his apprehensions about the struggle between the British and Americans, he consistently and tirelessly worked on behalf of the colonies, causing later Americans to claim him as a true patriot.
Compelling and fascinating evidence of his widespread, cultic following is revealed by accounts of visits to his crypt after his death. In 1775 a Revolutionary chaplain and several officers opened Whitefield’s casket in Newburyport to view his body. They removed his clerical collar and wristbands, cut them into strips, and passed them out to their soldiers, who were preparing for a Revolutionary battle. The soldiers tucked them into their clothing to take Whitefield into battle with them. As the years passed, ministers were the usual visitors to his tomb, making “pilgrimages” to view him. They would touch him before his body decomposed and handle his bones in later years. These viewings continued well into the nineteenth century. In 1789 Jesse Lee, a next-generation Methodist preacher of the Revolutionary period, visited Whitefield’s remains:
[Mr. Lee] descended into the vault, and removing the coffin lid, beheld the awful ravages of “the last enemy of man.” How quiet the repose, how changed the featuress of the man whose impassioned eloquence had moved multitudes to tears of penitence, and the impulses of a new-born zeal for God! His face had lost its comeliness; the fire of his eye was extinct, and he lay like a mighty warrior quietly reposing after the strife of conquest and the shout of victory. Death was gradually reducing his corporeal substance to its primitive dust. His soul was gone, and his flesh, in the midst of decay, was resting in hope of a resurrection unto life—to find its complete and perfect satisfaction when it awakes in the likeness of Christ. Silently they gazed on the fallen warrior of Christ, and fervently did Mr. Lee pray that the inspiration that made Whitefield an ornament of the Church and a blessing to the world, might dwell in his heart, and consecrate and give direction and energy to the talents with which God had intrusted him.1
Abel Stevens, another Methodist minister of the 1820s, wrote that he “took his skull … and examined it with great interest.” A Freewill Baptist minister, David Marks, who visited the tomb in 1834, described that “the coffin was about one third full of black earth, out of which projected a few bones. The skull bone was detached from the rest and was turned over.”2 At one point, his skull was temporarily removed, and two hundred replicas were made and sold, one of which is in a London museum even today.
Along with Whitefield’s death, 1770 saw the climax of the agitation regarding the American bishop. As in the debate over the revival in 1740, what appeared on the surface to be religious haggling over territorial control between colonial ministers and the Church of England was, in effect, a struggle for social control in general. The fight was equally about politics as religion. Indeed, all parties involved realized that the key to the public mind was to shape the dominant religious institution. American leaders understood, at least implicitly, that “forms, not spirit, sustained them in their own position of authority and determined the course of their society.”3 American ministers recognized the threat to civil freedoms that a bishop and strengthening of the Church of England in America could bring and fought against it tooth and nail. The struggle continued until colonial independence made it a moot issue, and the American Anglicans who sided with the Revolution changed their name to the Episcopal Church. The bishop was a central facet of the Revolution. New Englanders recognized the depth of the connection to the point that cartoonists could draw upon it. A news article after the war pointed out a tax levied by Massachusetts and the appointment of Samuel Seabury as the first Episcopal bishop: “TWO WONDERS OF THE WORLD—a Stamp Act in Boston and a Bishop in Connecticut.” The independent New Englanders of 1785 were willing to have both a Stamp Act and a bishop as long as they made the choice rather than Parliament and the Church of England.
Religion and politics in colonial America, as well as in Great Britain, were glued together, and nobody saw a reason to separate them. Two central religious theologies, Calvinism and Arminianism, provided the intellectual foundation for Tory and Whig political beliefs. Resisting the Church of England for threatening religious freedom was to resist the Tory-led British administration. Whitefield was too connected and dependent upon the British aristocracy for the support of his ministry to join the American cause fully, nor did he have a reason to do so before his death. His desire was to be accepted and loved by all denominations. But he did communicate his political positions symbolically, which exerted a greater public relations force than direct statements.
Perhaps better than any of his contemporaries, Whitefield understood how to establish public positions through symbolic actions that spoke louder than words ever could. By condemning arbitrary power in whichever sphere it manifested, Whitefield showed, rather than told, Americans how to resist as a reformer, not as a rebel. This is the strategy that colonial activists were using until 1774 as they tried to reconcile the colonies with the mother country. By instituting a belief system that demanded honesty from a person’s very core, Whitefield nudged American society down a path that could only lead to revolution once the British turned to violence. The revolutionary writers would continue leading America toward independence by following this path blazed by thirty years of Whitefield’s religious and social teachings. America’s founders would draw their most powerful arguments for independence from the logic Whitefield and the other Awakening ministers introduced and promoted, organizing their world with choices between us and them, good and evil.