Chapter I: Beginnings
I
Beginnings
From the moment of birth on December 16, 1714, in Gloucester England, Elizabeth Whitefield sensed a destiny for her youngest son George. After suffering weeks of illness following his birth, she remarked that he would bring her more comfort than all her other six children. No doubt she noticed the child could cry. What a set of lungs! During his childhood years, we might imagine her telling him, “Quiet down, Georgie! You will wake our guests.” The Whitefields, including Thomas, Elizabeth and their seven children, owned and ran the Bell Inn in Gloucester. It wasn’t the prestigious life of some of their ancestors, but it kept the family from poverty. Although Elizabeth’s older sons helped run the establishment, she did not want George to work there. She wanted a more esteemed career for him than being an innkeeper and did what she could to propel him upward in England’s society of rigid class structure.
The death of his father when Whitefield was two left a void that he perhaps did not recognize as a youngster. His childhood was typical of a fatherless child, as he experienced self-doubt and strove to find his place in the world. Whitefield would often act out in the absence of a watchful eye, describing his tendency for “impudent” and “brutish” behavior in his journal:
Lying, filthy talking, and foolish jesting I was much addicted to. Sometimes I used to curse, if not swear. Stealing from my mother I thought no theft at all, and used to make no scruple of taking money out of her pocket before she was up.
In his journal, Whitefield depicts Jekyll and Hyde personality traits, describing urges toward both good and evil that later grew into a full-fledged identity crisis. On one hand Whitefield declared, “It would be endless to recount the sins … of my younger days,” but on the other he said that in his playtime he would pretend to be a minister. After he pilfered coins from the pockets of his dozing mother to buy his favorite fruit and tarts, he would turn around and give some to the poor. He would also steal books about Christianity. Whitefield, struggled between good and evil impulses until at last he purged himself of his darker nature through his conversion in college.
Perhaps the most ironic twist of fate was a childhood bout with measles. The disease left George with permanent muscle damage in his face, which caused a squint in his left eye and a cross-eyed condition that is obvious in every portrait. However, his cross-eyed squint only added to the natural talent he was already developing. The “commoners” of England and America in the 1700s believed that a cross-eyed person had a “divine blessing”—literally a direct connection with God. That squint was so well known it earned him the nickname “Dr. Squintum” in a play written in the 1750s by Samuel Foote. In addition to common beliefs about his “hothne to God,” the squint fueled his performances with an impact that a “normal” speaker could hardly match. With pupils aimed in different directions, his eyes gave the impression that George was staring directly at you as he performed or preached. All the while, that old superstition reminded you that he was connected! For a “sinner” in his audience, his inescapable gaze, the divine blessing, and his claim that you were “damned” could have strong and obvious effects.
George soon found an outlet for his gift—and an audience of his own—on the stage. His keen memory, clear delivery, and an ability to take on another character made him a natural theatrical actor. He also loved acting to the point of obsession. But in the 1700s, church people called the stage the “devil’s playground” and a “haven for sin.” However, George would not be discouraged. By age fifteen, he found a niche and an outlet for his more unruly side as a child actor in Gloucester. A career on stage proved to be a reasonable choice, the theater being the central form of social entertainment. But betraying a deeper calling, Whitefield wrote, “I was always fond of being a clergyman, used frequently to imitate the ministers reading prayers.”
Nevertheless, Whitefield became preoccupied with acting, receiving the desperate attention and praise he lacked with no father in his life. As a young man living in the city, undoubtedly with time on his hands, Whitefield spent his money either attending plays or purchasing scripts. He often skipped school to practice: “During the time of my being at school, I was very fond of reading plays, and have kept from school for days together to prepare myself for acting them.” Whitefield would rehearse by giving private performances to his older sister Elisabeth. With his talent for mimicry, we might imagine him reading every part, skillfully taking on each character’s voice and demeanor as he shifted between both male and female characters. Drama consumed George’s free time until he later enrolled at Oxford University.
Since the Greeks and Romans began teaching the art of oratory, it has been well understood that students learn best by mimicking those with experience. By imitating the other seasoned actors he worked with, Whitefield was primed for preaching and public speaking. A youth has few bad habits to unlearn, and with good mentors excellence comes quickly. While one is young the body is ready and able to learn, and the practice time required for mastery is available. Whitefield had a drama tutor, owned acting manuals, and devoted his time to practicing eloquence, studying action, gestures, and expressions that communicated emotions. Later in life, his preaching caught the eye of the professional drama community in London, who admired his theatrical skills, were jealous of his talent, and hated the competition for audiences. Interestingly, Whitefield never gave credit for his preaching skill to drama. But neither did he attribute that skill to a supernatural gift, like his admiring religious biographers did. Perhaps, considering acting a “sinful” activity, he hesitated to acknowledge its role in developing his preaching skills. But wishing to enlighten the rest of us about the source of his talent, Whitefield describes his experience with acting in his autobiographical journal, for those who can read between the lines.
By age fifteen, after three years of studying Latin and the classical writings in grammar school, hard times crept up on George’s family. He was forced to quit school to work in the family business, cleaning rooms, doing laundry, and serving food and drinks to the guests. But aware of his own unique talent, he told his sister about his desire to attend Oxford: “God intends something for me which we know not of.” George’s mother shared the same feelings about his fate and was not content to see her son’s gift go to waste in common labor. Perhaps coincidentally, an old friend stopped by their home one day and explained to his mother how George could attend Oxford University as a “servitor,” cooking and cleaning for the “gentlemen” in return for a scholarship with room and board. George was already good at those tasks. His mother immediately turned to George and asked if he was willing to become a minister. No doubt, with all his dramatic ability, he replied, “With all my heart!” and she arranged a position for him through the help of friends. Although George had never been a dedicated student, he immediately reentered grammar school to complete his studies.
However, by sixteen, Whitefield reported making a “great proficiency in the school of the Devil,” surrounding himself with “debauched, abandoned, atheistical youths,” working hard to fit into the crowd: “I affected to look rakish, and was in a fair way of being as infamous as the worst of them.” But Whitefield was never completely comfortable with the wild life as he struggled with his internal conflict—one impulse nourishing his “secret and darling sin” (as he described it) pitted against another impulse calling him to the ministry. Whitefield suggested that the nature of this secret sin was sexual: “I began to ask why God had given me passions, and not permitted me to gratify them?” With Oxford and the ministry in his future, George’s conscience steered him back to the church, and he distanced himself from his questionable friends. Whitefield never did anything halfway. After rejecting the “rakish” life, he became obsessed with religion, believing the extreme perfomance of duty was what he needed to master his sin and find himself:
I began now to be more and more watchful over my thoughts, words and actions. I kept the following Lent, fasting Wednesday and Friday thirty-six hours together. My evenings … were generally spent in acts of devotion, reading … practical books and I constantly went to public worship twice a day.
To be a Christian in the British Empire before the Awakening revivals meant that a person inherited their religion via family tradition and intellectually agreed with church doctrines. Seldom was any sense of personal connection to God part of the process. Whitefield made himself worthy of his calling in the only way he knew how, by dedicating himself to every aspect of religious duty available to him. Yet his performance of duty did not resolve the inner conflict or help him develop an identity. In fact, it only heightened the conflict between his youthful impulses and spiritual calling.
In the midst of his struggle, George completed his grammar education, which further developed his oratorical skills. He thanked his schoolmaster “for the great pains he took with me and his other scholars, in teaching us to speak and write correctly.” He also studied Latin and Greek, which would later enable him to grasp classical manuscripts in the art of persuasion and oratory. After completing grammar school, he entered the venerable Pembroke College of Oxford University to study to be a priest for the Church of England.
At Oxford, Whitefield became one of the favorite servitors due to his skills learned while working at his family inn. He wrote, “I ingratiated myself into the gentlemen’s favour so far, that many, who had it in their power, chose me to be their servitor. By this favor, he earned extra money that made his life in college a bit easier. Still a boy searching for himself, pinched between a call to ministry and the passions of youth, he merely changed his means of rebellion from the “tough guy” in grammar school to the “oddfellow” in college. He hated to study (perhaps because he was cross-eyed and had problems with reading), so he became a loner. Yet, Whitefield still wrestled within himself. He renounced the stage and stopped playing cards with the other students. Disgusted with the pleasure-seeking life of his dorm mates, Whitefield moved even deeper into religion:
I began to pray and sing psalms thrice every day, besides morning and evening and to fast every Friday and to receive the Sacrament at a parish church near our college.
He was no longer the corrupt youth of his teen years but had turned completely around to become zealously religious, so much in fact that it gave him an excuse to neglect his studies. Yet Whitefield said that “hypocrisy crept into every action.” The struggle between conflicting impulses moved from his actions to his heart.
Whitefield’s Conversion
Soon after starting school at Oxford, Whitefield became aware of the Holy Club, a small society of students led by Charles and John Wesley, who met regularly for prayer, study, and mutual encouragement. Their club was dedicated to promoting a virtuous life. Sensing that perhaps they had solved their own identity struggles, Whitefield “longed to be acquainted with some of them.” However twelve months would pass before this acquaintance would happen, and in the meantime, he began to idolize these early “methodists,” following them around, taking sacraments at the same church, and copying their dedicated lifestyle. The methodists were young, excited ministry students so named for their “method” of cultivating a righteous lifestyle, which included rigorous schedules of prayer, singing psalms, meeting for mutual encouragement, helping the poor, and attending all official Church of England functions. George Whitefield and John and Charles Wesley remained loyal priests their entire lives, but they started a popular movement within the Church of England. Throughout the book (as well as in historical documents), I refer to “methodists” (small “m”) as these groups inspired by Whitefield, Wesley, and other leaders. They established the grass roots movement that would become the formal Methodist denomination in 1795.
Whitefield’s personal crisis peaked in his second year at Oxford as he still sensed the futility of following rules to resolve the clash between his call to the ministry and his sinful desires. He started acting out his internal conflict through the neglect of his appearance and personal health. Whitefield wrote, “As once I affected to look more rakish, I now strove to appear more grave than I really was.” Whitefield deepened his dedication to religious works, becoming even more of an outcast:
I soon found what a slave I had been to my sensual appetite, and now resolved to get the mastery over it by the help of Jesus Christ. Accordingly, by degrees, I began to leave off eating fruits and such like, and gave the money I usually spent in that way to the poor. Afterward, I always chose the worst sort of food … My apparel was mean. I thought it unbecoming a penitent to have his hair powdered. I wore woollen gloves, a patched gown and dirty shoes … I resolutely persisted in these voluntary acts of self denial, because I found them great promoters of the spiritual life … For many months, I went on in this state.
Finally, Charles Wesley answered Whitefield’s wish to become acquainted with the methodists when he knocked on his dorm room door one evening and pointed George toward a “conversion experience.” Wesley provided one book in particular that helped Whitefield see the light. The Life of God in the Soul of Man, written by the Puritan Henry Scougal, touched his soul deeply. Upon reading it Whitefield wrote:
Though I had fasted, watched and prayed, and received the Sacrament so long, yet I never knew what true religion was … At my first reading it I wondered what the author meant by saying, “That some falsely placed religion in going to church, doing hurt to no one, being constant in the duties of the closet” … “Alas!” thought I, “If this be not true religion, what is?” God soon showed me; for in reading a few lines further, that “true religion was union of the soul with God and Christ formed within us,” a ray of Divine light was instantaneously darted in upon my soul and from that moment, but not till then, did I know that I must be a new creature.
For Whitefield, becoming a new creature, would require a “conversion experience,” a doctrine that was not being taught in the Church of England (although its theology allowed for it), but was more closely associated with the Puritans. Now aware that conversion was the key to “true religion,” Whitefield began to seek it.
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Charles Wesley invited Whitefield to be part of the Holy Club at this point. Whitefield responded with an even more radical devotion to religious works in a period that he called his “temptation.” A conversion in the 1730s was not an instantaneous event like in many modern evangelical denominations where you simply “make a decision for Christ.” In the Puritan tradition that the Wesley brothers were promoting, recognizing the need and desiring to be converted was only the beginning point. True conversion was a longer process that involved a deep inner struggle as a person “wrestled” with God to learn if they had been “predestined.” After a period of intense self-analysis, prayer, and reflection, Puritans would respond that they sensed a physical assurance that they were finally converted. They kept diaries where they wrote tediously about their inner thoughts and struggles, which would be read later by the church elders to verify a true conversion. In this Puritan tradition, Whitefield wrote a full account of his experience in his journal.
After several months of this intense spiritual wresthng, Whitefield had fasted so much that he had grown thin and weak, unable to fend off common viruses. Amidst continuous illness his crisis deepened, affecting his studies and catching the eye of his teachers:
I constantly walked out in the cold mornings till part of one of my hands was quite black. This, with my continued abstinence, and inward conflicts, at length so emaciated my body, that, at Passion-week, finding I could scarce creep upstairs, I was obliged to inform my kind tutor of my condition, who immediately sent for a physician to me.
Whitefield broke down physically and emotionally. The college sent him home to Gloucester to recuperate. It was here that Whitefield experienced a sequence of temptation, persecution, physical affliction, spiritual oppression, mourning, and finally his conversion. At long last, Whitefield reached the Puritan-like breakthrough and assurance of his conversion that he had been so desperately seeking:
Soon after this, I found and felt in myself that I was delivered from the burden that had so heavily oppressed me. The spirit of mourning was taken from me, and I knew what it was truly to rejoice in God my Saviour; and, for some time, could not avoid singing psalms wherever I was; but my joy gradually became more settled, and, blessed be God, has abode and increased in my soul, saving a few casual intermissions, ever since. Thus were the days of my mourning ended. After a long night of desertion and temptation, the Star, which I had seen at a distance before, began to appear again, and the Day Star arose in my heart. Now did the Spirit of God take possession of my soul, and, as I humbly hope, seal me unto the day of redemption.
Whitefield had achieved the new birth. He had resolved his lifelong identity search. He now believed and felt himself to be on the inside what he strove to appear on the outside. His external works were now motivated from purity within as his conversion into true religion drove out his hypocrisy. For Whitefield this was a rite of passage into manhood. He displayed increased maturity from that point forward.
After conversion, he regained his health. But before returning to Oxford, Whitefield devoted much of his time to studying the Bible and Christian theology. He visited old friends and encouraged them, with some success, to seek conversion. By the time he returned to Oxford, he was ready to approach his classical studies with vigor. Whitefield wrote of his transformed self:
From the time I knew what was true and undefiled Christianity, I entertained high thoughts of the importance of the ministerial office and was not solicitous what place should be prepared for me, but how I should be prepared for a place.
What a real change: from seeking the status and a steady job of being a priest, to focusing on being the best he could be for whatever the future would bring. To prepare himself, Whitefield seriously considered the biblical qualifications for ministry and examined his motives for wanting a ministerial position. As a new man, the conversion experience, or the “new birth” as he called it, formed the heart of Whitefield’s theology and preaching for the rest of his life. He jumped right back into his place as an energetic member of the Holy Club where he developed deep and lasting relationships with the Wesley brothers. Whitefield’s own identity and a sense of destiny were solidified by the combination of his conversion and his participation in the Holy Club. His identity crisis was over, and he now had a strong sense of purpose for his life’s work.
In addition to Whitefield’s desire to see everyone experience the new birth, he also wanted all believers to join a “religious society,” an informal, small, home meeting of believers modeled after the Holy Club. Whitefield understood firsthand how friends can encourage one another to make genuine long-term change a reality. One can perhaps see the underlying ideas in these two aspects of his ministry—that a person is “born” into a community and then reshapes her or his social activities around this new community. This pattern of conversion and participation served the church well, but it also provided a model for converting and participating in other areas of life.
From these two actions, experiencing the new birth and joining a religious society, Whitefield began to build an intercolonial movement with an elegant and profound structure. Whitefield’s spiritual struggle and conversion provided a touchstone for him to evaluate the condition of other ministers, churches, and parishioners. He was compelled to insist upon conversion and participation in church and religious societies before he would accept others as spiritual equals. His developing ideas would settle out into a focused message that invited anyone with an unsettled identity into a Christian community through conversion (and America was filled with people who fit that description). Converts became “new” people, their new natures re-formed by participating in a community of like-minded believers, connected to one another and setting themselves apart from people who merely attended church out of a sense of tradition. From his own experience, Whitefield recognized the futility of the outward performance without the inward change of heart. It was only natural that he felt compelled to overthrow the religious establishment and its membership by works or birth wherever he found it—be it England or America.
The story in his autobiography, George Whitefield’s Journals, reveals much about the man. Within their pages Whitefield bared his soul. Written when he was twenty-five, he carefully revealed himself as called by God to a great destiny. From its opening line where Whitefield was “born in an inn,” to his unusually young ordination (age twenty-one), Whitefield let the reader conclude that a greater force orchestrated his life and led him into this high-profile ministry. Whitefield’s story in the Journals was told in light of his vision for ministry and intended to show God’s approval and divine guidance of his life.
Whitefield’s Studies at Oxford from 1734 to 1736
After his new birth, Whitefield’s health improved and he returned to Oxford. In his own writings, he credited the development of his mind to his study of spiritual books. But reading between the lines and examining what young people studied at Oxford shows that his education provided the tools essential to his success. Oxford required classes in “rhetoric” (the art of persuasion) and “dialectic” (the science of logic) as core subjects. Although his journal credits spiritual activities for his preaching skills, it also reveals educational benefits, providing examples of what students were studying at the time.
Whitefield learned logic, persuasive strategies, and artistic language during his time at Oxford, all of which energized his sermons. The British colleges in the early eighteenth century had not yet converted to teaching science the way other European schools had. Instead, they maintained an older tradition that focused on learning to argue effectively. Academic leaders at Oxford stayed with a classical Roman education and temporarily downplayed the new scientific methods. The Enlightenment came late to Pembroke College where Oxford’s ministers were prepared.
Unlike education today, where students prove their learning through written essays and papers, Oxford required a series of oral exams during which students stood up and demonstrated their knowledge by giving speeches. Whitefield also participated in public debates where both debaters were guided by a “senior sophister” who helped them sharpen their argumentation tactics. Oxford assigned students to a mentor in both logic and rhetoric to guarantee the integrity of the degree program. Freshman lectures engaged the works of Aristotle, Cicero, Quintilian, and Hermogenes—all masters of persuasion. Students studied logic and moral philosophy in their second year. Whitefield also attended lectures on Homer, Demosthenes, Isocrates, and Euripides, from whom he learned the artful use of language. Quotes from Greek and Roman authors spiced up Whitefield’s writings, showing his familiarity with classical texts. In fact, quoting the classical Greek stories was a sign to others that one was well educated.
While George Whitefield received ample opportunities to train and discipline his voice, becoming an orator involves more than just possessing talent and listening to lectures. It also requires a long-recognized element of skill in composition. As the great Roman orator Cicero wrote, “The pen is more eloquent than the tongue.” In his Journals, Whitefield describes writing sermons as assignments. Many of his early sermons clearly follow a textbook pattern undoubtedly influenced by the writing style of his college essays.
In addition to the written exercises required of the Oxford student body, students also were expected to participate in “declamations of themes, both oral and written,” presented in a public forum to fellow students and faculty members. These exercises consisted of written essays that were delivered orally to the class. The declamations were corrected, sharpened, and resubmitted, usually in Latin, so students would learn from their mistakes. Whitefield reported his regular participation in the declamations.
Prior to college, Whitefield had developed his abilities from his acting tutors, but after renouncing acting, he continued the oral rehearsal by reading to the poor. Whitefield explained:
I was, from time to time, engaged to visit the sick and the prisoners, and to read to poor people, till I made it a custom, as most of us did, to spend an hour everyday in doing acts of charity.
He regularly read at the prison, increasing the number of his visits as he approached graduation. He was aware of how such readings were helping him improve his speaking skill. After preaching his first sermon he exclaimed, “Oh the unspeakable benefit of reading to the poor, and exercising our talents while students at the University!”
For Whitefield, these readings replaced the vocal exercise he had formerly gained from the theater, further sharpening his vocal skill through practice. Whitefield gave much of the credit to his regular participation in the declamations for the development of his unique preaching ability, and he encouraged other ministers to do likewise, specifically in the form of charity readings:
Would the Heads and Tutors of our Universities but follow His [Christ’s] example, and, instead of discouraging their pupils from doing anything of this nature, send them to visit the sick and the prisoners, and to pray with, and read practical books of religion to the poor, they would find such exercises of more service to them, and to the Church of God, than all their private and public lectures put together.
Whitefield continued to praise his experience with declamation, crediting it in no preparation, claiming that he spoke “with as much freedom as though I had been a preacher for some years.” Whitefield had a fast start as far as his oratorical ability was concerned.
Whitefield cultivated his natural talent for oratory with an education immersed in classical teachings about persuasion. He then improved his oratorical skills through public practice. Recognizing his future as a preacher, undoubtedly Whitefield took his preparation seriously. Those who claim that his eloquence and persuasive skills were simply a natural talent have overlooked Whitefield’s mastery of vocal excellence, study of artful language use, and his grasp of the psychology of persuasion—all learned through an education far more rigorous than modern colleges provide. The combination of talent, study, and practice make up the three essential ingredients of fine oratory that teachers have emphasized since before the days of Aristotle. Whitefield’s education began early with competent actors and preachers to imitate. He honed his nonverbal delivery skills through an obsession with acting, and received a complete education at Oxford, strengthened his voice through declamation. Even his crossed and squinted eye became an unexpected asset.
Whitefield’s Identity
George Whitefield discovered himself and his purpose in the world due to the friendship and guidance of Charles Wesley and the Oxford Holy Club. His conversion straightened out his attitude, and he graduated from Oxford in the spring of 1736. Ordained as a deacon at age twenty-one, Whitefield recalled that “The next morning, waiting upon God in prayer to know what He would have me to do, these words, ‘Speak out, Paul,’ came with great power to my soul. Immediately my heart was enlarged.” Whitefield described the identity shift “from a servitor to a Bachelor of Arts—from a common drawer to a clergyman.”
Whitefield’s former false identities as the young rake and the odd fellow are perhaps connected to his acting gift where he could change characters at will. But as Whitefield found himself in his conversion experience, a genuine identity emerged as a “Man for God.” He became convinced of his destiny and took practical steps to achieve it. This new identity was permanent as he increasingly strove to become the man for God for the rest of his life. One biographer records a revealing story about his identity. During an outdoor sermon in London, Whitefield lost heart and was about to stop:
Hairy chests, cauliflower ears and broken noses were not pretty sights to a man timid at heart. Hearing ferocious and horrid imprecations and menaces, his courage began to fail. He felt a tug on his gown and looked down. Elizabeth [Whitefield’s wife] had her eyes firm upon him. “George,” she called. “Play the Man for God!”
Whitefield had to act the part of a preacher until he overcame his fears. Even as a married man in his late twenties, he still relied on his old acting skills to steady himself in challenging situations.
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Initially, perhaps, Whitefield made the pulpit his stage, but it went beyond mere acting as the years passed. He was playing a real role as the man for God in a real world with real consequences. He faced mob violence, personal assaults, and a few assassination attempts. The minister did not disappear when the sermon was over; rather he counseled new converts in his so-called spare time. As his career progressed, he acted until it was no longer acting and he was the real thing. As Francis McConnell writes, “People like the Americans of the eighteenth century cannot be mistaken in their judgment of a religious leader through a stretch of thirty years.”1 Whitefield viewed acting as a tool to be employed in the pursuit of his calling. A bit of acting can be found in almost every one of his sermons, but it appears as a carefully selected tool rather than a general approach. Whitefield’s published sermons, including those taken in shorthand, contain little dramatized scripting of biblical characters. Even in the sermon “Abraham’s Offering Up His Son Isaac,” which is quoted by every writer who discusses his pulpit acting, Whitefield limits the sections where he was playing various parts. If drama was his chief selling point, one would expect to see much more of it in the printed sermons. His enemies would have scolded him for acting instead of using standard preaching methods. But they never did—they criticized him for other things. If his acting brought him a sense of personal fulfillment, any such benefit was secondary. Whitefield relied on commonsense arguments, figures of speech, and classical persuasion strategies to move people. When emotion and a dazzling performance alone persuade a person to an action, the change is usually short lived. “Buyer’s remorse” sets in as the mind eventually sees past the performance and examines the logic of the decision. Whitefield understood, as all good persuaders do, that without solid logic, the mind cannot embrace the new idea. But he also understood that without stirring people’s emotions, they would not take action and make decisions that will change their lives. It seems that Whitefield may have taken Francis Bacon’s advice seriously, that the good persuader “applies reason to the imagination” so that the audience will decide and act.