Chapter V: Controversy: “I’m just getting started”
V
Controversy
“I’m just getting started”
George Whitefield may have been timid by nature, but when it came to God and the freedom to worship, he didn’t back down from anyone. When Alexander Garden turned against him, the issue was about Whitefield’s condemnation of Old Lights. He challenged Whitefield to prove they were unconverted. Whitefield wrote:
He charged me with enthusiasm and pride, for speaking against the generality of the clergy, and desired I would make my charge good. I told him, I thought I had already; though as yet I had scarce begun with them.
Garden threw Whitefield out of his house and warned him not to preach in his jurisdiction under threat of suspension. But since Garden had no authority to suspend him, Whitefield ignored him. Garden then took his case to the people, publishing his complaints just after Whitefield’s American tour ended—a bit too late to stop Whitefield’s message.
Garden’s pamphlet warned the people that Whitefield’s influence came from the power in his voice, not from any reasonable content in his messages. Garden asked readers to compare portions of a printed Whitefield sermon with their memory of hearing it, and if they felt nothing, then their emotional response in person must be illegitimate. And if that was the case, its power was of questionable origin:
Thus, I say, you heard the Contents of the following Pages from the pulpit, ‘midst that enchanting Sound in your Ears, exciting your Passions, and foreclosing your Understandings against them. They opposed and breathed only Persecution and Slaughter against that Angel! that Seraphim! the wondrous WHITEFIELD!—And therefore away with them; they must be unregenerate words.
In addition to arguing that the force of the sermon was due to some magical power in his voice, Garden accused Whitefield of not even being a real Christian, and his attack signaled the coming conflict. As Whitefield’s tour continued, Garden was still writing and getting his pamphlet to the printer. Although Garden and Whitefield agreed upon many things, their differences were critical since they determined a person’s membership in God’s kingdom—in or out.
Garden’s obsessive attack is out of proportion with typical religious squabbling. He insightfully sensed beneath the surface of the religious debate that Whitefield’s message threatened not just the church organization but political and social organizations as well. It did not help that Whitefield ignored his orders to stop preaching. Whitefield had been inspired by the renowned philosopher John Locke who held the view that people had the right to choose their form of government. The Awakening preachers extended the principle from politics to religion. Whitefield stated that some ministers are unconverted and unfit to lead a church. He implied that people ought to leave that church and worship at one where the minister is converted. Gilbert Tennent and James Davenport did not imply this; they stated it bluntly. Due to their influence, people began defecting from Old Light churches in droves.
When church and state are not separate, choosing to worship differently means changes for the government. Garden recognized that this logic could undermine his own power base as well as the local magistrates and colonial governor. Just like Whitefield was dismissing Garden, even though Garden was his elder and held a higher position within the Church of England, Whitefield’s message could instigate a similar rebellion. But, since Whitefield himself was not preaching up a rebellion against the king or governors, Garden was forced to criticize him on church issues. For the time being, the debate was over religion, and Garden represented the antirevival clergy. But as the next several years passed, Charles Chauncy, a well-educated and respected Boston Puritan, stepped up for the second phase of opposition. As the revival continued, Chauncy was able to show the connection between doctrinal positions and political beliefs and directly charge Whitefield with rebellion.
If London was the key to England, then likewise Boston was the key to America. If Whitefield could awaken the tough crowd of Boston, then the revival would truly extend throughout the British colonies, as Whitefield had intended. Whitefield’s reception in New England and Boston was indeed passionate, but here the controversy became the most heated. The stakes were much higher for the Old Light ministers in Massachusetts’ church-state society, where a portion of one’s taxes was used to subsidize the Puritan church. The papers had been publicizing Whitefield’s tour, so when he arrived on September 19, 1740, four thousand people showed up to hear him. The next day, six thousand attended the morning service, and eight thousand that afternoon. On Sunday, fifteen thousand came to hear him preach. Whitefield wrote, “To see people ready to hear, makes me forget myself … Most wept for a considerable time.” But what Whitefield and the New Lights saw as a marvelous response to the preaching of “God’s Word,” the Old Light ministers saw as a mob with all of its implications. Nobody else, especially politicians, had been able to draw such large crowds to hear a speech.
As Whitefield was preparing to preach in a meeting house the next day, people crowded in, standing in the aisles until it was filled beyond capacity. Upon hearing the sound of a board cracking, people feared the balcony was collapsing and jumped down, rushing for doors and windows. Five people were killed in the stampede (the air forced from their lungs as they were squeezed between the masses of pressing bodies), and many others were injured. Whitefield quickly announced that he would preach outside, and several thousand stood in the rain to hear him as they tended to the dead and injured. The tragedy symbolically foreshadowed trouble. Those who were suspicious about the revivals were convinced that Whitefield was dangerous. No longer were these meetings “peaceful,” the crowds could get out of control. What if the enthusiasm Whitefield was so good at creating was aimed at government leaders instead of unconverted ministers? What if the crowds took a political turn and turned against the Old Light traditional power structure? The connection to such fears was rooted in the recognition that Whitefield was indeed providing an alternative identity through his call to genuine Christianity. Two days later, any such suspicions were further exacerbated as Whitefield visited Harvard where he offended its faculty by saying:
Discipline is at a low ebb. Bad books are becoming fashionable among the tutors and students. Tillotson and Clark are read, instead of Sheppard, Stoddard and such-like evangelical writers.
Harvard was the institution that trained all of Massachusetts’ ministers and political leaders. These and other such comments fueled more criticism and provided the verification Whitefield’s critics needed to make a political case against the revival.
After preaching for several weeks in the vicinity of Boston, Whitefield traveled west to Northampton, where he befriended Jonathan Edwards and reignited the revival Edwards oversaw a few years earlier. Swinging further south into New Jersey, Whitefield encouraged Gilbert Tennent to visit Boston and continue preaching to people there as Whitefield prepared to go back to England. Tennent stepped out of his usual pastoral role and traveled for much of 1741, preaching fiery revival sermons that especially attacked unconverted ministers. James Davenport, inspired by Whitefield’s and Tennent’s success, journeyed to New England to continue the revival the following year, attacking Old Lights and their ministers even more forcefully. After Davenport, numerous ministers, inspired by Whitefield and the others, began to travel and preach throughout the colonies.
After feeling that his revival tour was completed, George Whitefield departed for England in January of 1741 and set about spreading the revival to Wales and Scotland. His vision of having the whole world as his parish was becoming fully manifest, with followers in the British Isles and now in America. Just as a country minister assigned to several churches would travel between towns, Whitefield traveled between his self-created parishes within the British Empire. He maintained his new friendships by continuously sending letters. He now had publishing connections on both sides of the Atlantic, which he used to reinforce his ideas. In addition, he created an official position as the head of the Georgia orphanage, which required him to raise money and supplied him with a legitimate reason to travel and preach.
In view of Whitefield’s groundbreaking work, the Great Awakening can be attributed to his efforts. Whitefield brought the energy and leadership needed to spread the message of the new birth to other colonies. Edwards and Tennent traveled little before 1740, remaining in or near their local areas. Moreover, there was no plan to spread the revival to other locations, nor was there anyone for the task, until Whitefield began his preaching tour. The revival’s intercolonial scope emerged during and after Whitefield’s tour, after which, as Sydney Ahlstrom points out, “Whitefield, Tennent, and Edwards—Anglican, Presbyterian, and Congregationalist—felt themselves to be of one mind in their great undertaking.”1
Alan Heimert explains that “the revival and the evangelical impulse pressed to the goal of a more beautiful social order—which meant, in the New World, a union of Americans, freed from the covenant relationships of the parochial past and united by the love which God’s American children bore for one another.”2 In retrospect, the final result of revival for both Old Lights and New Lights was positive. The revival served to strengthen the glorious New England religious tradition as well as spread it to the middle and southern colonies. Both camps wanted the same thing—a community of believers who maintained moral lives, peaceful relationships, and public virtue. And both ultimately benefited from the Awakening, as their churches were crowded again.
But religion and politics were highly intertwined in colonial America, and comparisons between unconverted ministers and corrupt political leaders rang true with many colonists. Whitefield’s arguments about the ministers provided a logic template that bred opposition to political authority if it could be accused of corruption, negligence, or abuse of power.
Whitefield’s Reception in America
Whitefield’s message of identity and a Christian community encouraged a return to morality and virtue. For the first time, members of different churches and different nationalities viewed themselves as part of an intercolonial Christian community. But such change is practically meaningless if confined to Boston and Philadelphia. Was the awakening truly “great”? Historians have been debating the question. One such historian is Jon Butler, who does not believe that the revival was as extensive as claimed. He says that later writers focused on particular places and invented the Great Awakening.3 However historian Frank Lambert recently dedicated an entire book to challenging Butler, demonstrating that the revivals were indeed extensive, and everybody living in America at the time knew it.4 Another historian, Patricia Bonomi concurred, writing that “churches were being built or enlarged everywhere.”5 As we learn more about the period, more historians are agreeing with the greatness of the awakening period.
John Gillies writes of Whitefield that “wherever he went, prodigious numbers flocked to hear him. His audiences often consisted of four or five thousand; and in populous places … the concourse was so great that they have been computed to be from twenty to thirty thousand.” News of his arrival traveled fast in the colonies. Upon preaching to two thousand people in Neshaminy, Pennsylvania, in 1739 Whitefield wrote in his journal, “It is surprising how such bodies of people, so scattered abroad, can be gathered at so short a warning.” Crowds easily expanded to eight thousand in Philadelphia or New York and reached twenty thousand in Boston. Nathan Cole’s account of his frenzied and hurried journey to hear Whitefield shows Whitefield’s ability to draw a crowd on short notice. Why would anyone miss him when he came to town in 1740? His meetings were the place to be.
Making the case for Whitefield’s impact does not have to rely on his friends. Evidence can also be drawn from the writings and opinions of his critics. Charles Chauncy cynically wrote:
Accordingly, about two years since, he was received as though he had been an Angel of God; yea, a God come down in the likeness of Man. He was strangely flocked after by all Sorts of Persons, and that much admired by the Vulgar, both great and small … The grand subject of conversation was Mr. Whitefield, and the whole Business of the Town to run, from Place to Place, to hear him preach.
Edward Wigglesworth, who called Whitefield’s effect “more extensive and pernicious than any man could have imagined,” also said, “Perhaps there is not now a single town in this province, and, probably not in Connecticut, in which there are not numbers of people whose minds are under strong prejudices against their ministers.” Whitefield’s opponents would not have spent the money or dedicated the time to oppose him if his influence had been confined to mere corners of colonial society. The “good old boy” network must have been asking themselves, “where might this movement lead,” as they considered the political fallout of what was shaping up to be a significant shift in colonial religion.
The widespread publication and sale of his printed materials also testifies to Whitefield’s popularity. By the end of his American tour, his writings were circulating throughout the colonies: He had 133 American publications in the 1740s, consisting of 64 sermon editions or collections, 31 journal editions, 34 publications defending his doctrine, and 4 works accounting for his ministry finances. If only 1,000 copies of each edition were released, that makes 133,000 individual works—1 for approximately every 5 adult colonists! This does not include the newspaper reprints of interesting passages—a common practice in the 1740s. This was an age with public reading houses, where books were shared, and newspapers were passed from house to house instead of being used to light the fireplace.
At Whitefield’s request, Gilbert Tennent traveled to New England in 1742 for a brief period, generating increasing excitement about the revival and further provoking the Old Lights with his thundering denunciations. His now famous sermon “The Danger of an Unconverted Ministry” was published in 1741 and was inspired by Whitefield’s teachings. Without really intending it, Tennent’s sermon caused members of Old Light churches to defect to New Light congregations, a situation that greatly alarmed the New England Old Lights, whose misgivings about Whitefield’s teachings were being spectacularly confirmed.
Shortly thereafter, James Davenport also found popularity in Boston preaching similar messages, but his excessive enthusiasm caused many Boston clergy and finally city officials to cry “enough!” Davenport was jailed a couple of times, judged as mentally incompetent, forced to write a retraction for encouraging enthusiastic excesses, and sent back to his congregation in Connecticut. Later, Davenport admitted that his actions hurt the revival by providing examples that critics could cite as evidence in their attacks. Tragically, Davenport passed away “believing that the cause of Christ would have been stronger if he had never been born.”6
As a result of Davenport’s excessive antics (not to mention the other newly inspired traveling preachers), the revival came under fire from a group of Boston ministers led by Charles Chauncy. Alexander Garden’s charges against Whitefield had already been reprinted in Boston by 1741, and Chauncy, after a time of careful consideration, joined the criticism wholeheartedly in 1742 with the publication of his sermon “Enthusiasm Described and Caution’d Against.” Here, Chauncy claims that the New Light preachers were mistaking their “own passions for divine communications” and that personal responses they supposed were inspired by God’s spirit were actually due to an “over-heated imagination.”
Chauncy took full advantage of Davenport’s theatrics, which justified his point that the revival enthusiasm was destructive, divisive, and irrational. Chauncy listed the wild events of the Awakening, publishing them in September of 1743 in a book entitled Seasonable Thoughts on the State of Religion in New England. Centered in Boston, the antirevival group wrote and preached against the Awakening, supporting their claims with the excessive enthusiasm of Davenport. In the face of consistent criticism, the revival cooled off. Most colonists had already heard and responded to the message of the new birth one way or another. The intense period of the Awakening subsided by 1743, and the war of words over what the revival meant began.
In Seasonable Thoughts, Chauncy singled out Whitefield as the instigator of all the excesses and divisions and as the root of the social disorder in New England. He piled on the complaints against the traveling New Light preachers, of whom he viewed Whitefield as the chief. He demonstrated how every negative aspect of the revival originated with Whitefield, was reinforced by Tennent, stretched to its limits by Davenport, and then placed in widespread practice by other traveling ministers. Chauncy loudly expressed the suspicions and misgivings of many Old Light ministers against the revival movement. He developed his case into a seemingly airtight argument, backed by Scripture, Puritan tradition, and the respected opinions of American and British religious leaders. The widespread criticism of the revival forced ministers and people across the colonies to reconsider their support of the movement and take a public stand. Even though the respected Jonathan Edwards competently defended the revival theology against Old Light ministers, and even though the New Lights had a large majority, the Old Lights voiced their position forcefully in print, effectively creating a social division through the newly emerging public media of newspapers.
The controversy over the revival divided American churches into two distinct groups after the Great Awakening, one supporting and one opposing the revival, New Lights and Old Lights. For the sake of understanding, I have simplified a very complex situation, but Whitefield pushed people to make a choice about conversion. Though America itself was religiously, intellectually, and socially divided, the public controversy goaded everyone to choose one side or the other, causing the mosaic of churches to align behind one view or the other.
Social Effects of Whitefield’s Message
Whitefield brought to America the concept that there was indeed such a thing as a false religion and that a person obtained citizenship in a true Christian community through the new birth. From this point, a person was regenerated into a moral lifestyle through the power of God’s spirit, which was the believer’s privilege. For all practical purposes, Whitefield also presented the new birth as a choice to “come to Christ”—a choice that empowered the individual. Whitefield had rebuked the Old Lights for denying these truths to the people. For English colonists, the idea of a common privilege made sense from their experience of the natural rights of English citizenship. For other Europeans, conceiving of something like a common privilege in religion helped them to understand English natural rights as they made a new life under British rule. But most important was the interdenominational, intercolonial Christian community in which Whitefield urged them to take membership. It was a community that provided a new identity based in “genuine Christianity.” Whitefield’s message provided the foundation people needed to transform their previous conflicted identities into new ones. As Francis Fukuyama notes, “American culture is very different from European cultures, which are firmly wedded to ‘blood and soil.’”7 Whitefield’s message moved beyond the blood and soil, shaping personal identities to match the opportunities in America. Once a community of awakened believers adopted this new aspect of identity, it provided beliefs that operated as unquestioned logic templates to guide ideas in every area of life, including politics. As a result, people from various nationalities and churches who threw their lots in with the New Lights developed similar political beliefs to accompany their newly adopted self-understanding.
Physically, Whitefield brought people together. Living in their own communities and neighborhoods, the colonists did not have a cause that would call them to one location. While leaders often met together for colonial governmental business, the citizens did not. Whitefield changed all that by providing a place where people came on equal footing to consider his message. The importance of breaking down the physical and social class barriers between people must not be overlooked. People tend to trust those with whom they spend time and share beliefs. In Whitefield’s events, people of diverse national and religious origins had the opportunity to worship together, and this encouraged the development of other public meetings.
In addition to promoting a sense of community based on closeness, the new relationships among colonists also helped fuel the explosion of commercialism in the latter 1700s. As Fukuyama explains, “A people’s ability to maintain a shared ‘language of good and evil’ is critical to the creation of trust, social capital, and all other positive economic benefits.” Fukuyama goes on to say that “when membership in a church extracts a high price in terms of emotional commitment and changes in lifestyle, it creates a strong sense of moral community among its members.”8 Whitefield’s role in this process was to draw people into these religious organizations and instill in them a common vocabulary, sense of morality, and a system of thought that assisted in the growth of trust.
Promoting a message of equality for all people at public meetings threatened the colonial political leadership. Remember that British society was divided into “lords” and “commoners,” along with several other class distinctions that are foreign to modern Americans. If the meetings remained religious, local civic leaders had no jurisdiction. They could neither prevent nor control the content of the revival meetings, even though they tried. Here was a giant rising up in society that was beginning to break out of civil and rational constraints. Commoners were beginning to reject the authority of their religious leaders. Already several people had died at a meeting, and Whitefield routinely moved people to passionate tears as well as to what the leaders called “unreasonable behavior.” As a result of the revivals, the class distinction between ministers and parishioners dissolved as people came to believe that many ministers were corrupt. Whitefield elevated the status of the common people, pushing against the boundaries of the social class system. The usual things that previously elevated an individual in the social order—birth, education, and wealth—were suddenly secondary to the conversion experience.
Political boundaries were stretched as well. Religion has always been a means to control the masses (as has been oft stated by many philosophers and notable atheists). In other words, a society’s religion makes the rules about who gets power and who has to obey. So we should not be surprised to find religious conflict at the heart of most civil wars. Authoritarian rulers must have an authoritarian religion to instill a respect for leadership. Thus, the rigid Church of England practices found a nice fit with politics that supported the king and class structure. But the other Protestant churches could not afford to have their destiny in the hands of a king who could turn against them by converting to Roman Catholicism, as did King James a hundred years earlier. So the dissenting churches set up organizations that allowed for self-rule without the need for bishops. By and large, each New Light group chose their own pastor and made their own decisions. They embraced the democratic principles of parliamentary rule—just one step away from republicanism. Even though New England had distanced itself from daily English politics, it felt the effects of shifting policies. As emigration rates rose and war between England and France approached, the political turmoil of Europe quickly crossed the Atlantic to shape events in the colonies.
Within a democratic society, any religious group that focuses on a single issue, and claims exclusive possession of the truth is eventually pushed aside. But the New Lights focused on legitimate issues, and the spread of revival made a majority of them. The Old Lights could not ignore or ridicule them out of the mainstream. For the Old Light power structure, everything was at stake. Would the equality of the New Lights overrun the authoritarian world of the Old Lights? The popularity of revival beliefs and their direct assault on the social order pushed the Old Lights into a corner where they were forced to fight back.
Underneath the religious debate we find political views motivating groups to support or oppose the revivals. To be sure, ministers on both sides were genuinely concerned for the church and true doctrine, but changes in an entire society do not come without political reverberations, especially when empowered by a message that sets up simple categories of “us” and “them.”
Recognizing these categories as founded and popularized in the revival, Old Lights could see clearly where Whitefield’s message was leading. As the New Lights became more politically active, their public debates focused on an identity of “us,” which undermined American authority structures by portraying those in power as “them.” A situation was developing that can only be seen as explosive. In the final analysis, the New Light teachings nurtured the evolving republican ideals that sought to take local control of civil affairs, gaining freedom from an oppressive monarchy.