14. A Better Place
Immigrants were pouring into Philadelphia, thousands each year in the 1730s. The idyllic corner of land that William Penn had bought from the Lenape less than half a century earlier was now teeming with activity, as refugees, runaways, and opportunists tried to make a new life in a new world.
As a leading printer in the colony, and now a newspaper editor, Ben Franklin had a front-row seat. His home and office were within a few blocks of the wharf where the immigrants would disembark. Would he observe them poking through the stalls set up in the middle of Market Street, buying food after their long journey? Would he smile to see them wearing layers of clothing and tucking bread under their arms, as he once did? Or would he worry that the city couldn’t hold them all?
Penn’s peaceable kingdom was now chaotic. Yes, many of the newcomers moved right on through the city to establish new towns north and west, but the city population was growing rapidly too, and even the outhers were still part of the Pennsylvania colony. The political structures set up in the 1701 charter were becoming obsolete, and the social structures—well, there really were no social structures. Until Ben Franklin got involved.
Nowadays we talk about some people being “joiners.” They move into town and quickly sign up for the Rotary, the Town Watch, the Little League, the public library, and so on. Franklin was more than a joiner; he was a “linker.” He created many of the organizations that other people joined—and that many are still joining today.
For instance, along with other members of the Junto, he formed a lending library. Books were expensive, especially if they had to be shipped from England, so it only made sense for a group that was highly literate but financially challenged to pool their reading material. But Ben went beyond the Junto, selling fifty memberships (subscriptions) at forty shillings each (and then ten shillings a year) to establish a fund from which they could buy new books for lending.
Forty years later, there were many such libraries throughout the colonies. Sounding strangely modern, Ben Franklin boasted in his autobiography, “This was the mother of all the North American subscription libraries now so numerous.”1
While the Library Company was certainly a convenience to its members, it also revealed a broader vision Ben had for society. Together, the colonists could succeed. Many of them were rugged individualists, but they needed each other. Ben was an individualist himself. He had great sympathy for that mind-set, but he knew that teamwork was the only way to tame this new world. Flung across the ocean and landing on this spot of earth, the colonists could struggle separately or thrive collectively.
It’s clear that Ben also understood the social value of knowledge. If only rich people could afford books, then the lower classes could never rise up—power would remain in the hands of a few highborn leaders. As a middle-class business owner, Ben had an interest in breaking this class system. A public library was not just an entertainment center—it was “power to the people,” an early blow for democracy.
As Franklin wrote triumphantly in 1771, “These libraries have improved the general conversation of the Americans, made the common tradesmen and farmers as intelligent as most gentlemen from other countries, and perhaps have contributed in some degree to the stand so generally made throughout the colonies in defense of their privileges.”2
Later, Franklin would create a political cartoon of a segmented snake—each segment labeled for one of the colonies. The caption read “Join or Die.” That wasn’t a threat, just a political and military reality. Yet, as a young civic leader, Ben saw this as a social reality as well, which was why he kept creating structures in which people could work together for mutual benefit.
Writing under a pseudonym in the Gazette in 1733, Ben presented the idea of a volunteer fire company. The steady growth of the city had made it susceptible, and while there were always brave souls who jumped into action, they lacked organization and equipment. The following year, Ben published another piece on the subject, carefully nudging public opinion. The idea eventually took shape, and Franklin himself organized the Union Fire Company in 1736. Members not only kept equipment at the ready (including leather buckets), but they also met socially once a month to discuss “such ideas as occurred to us upon the subject of fires.”3
Seventy years earlier, the Great Fire of London had nearly obliterated that great city, displacing more than 80 percent of its residents. Philadelphia was still small compared to that metropolis, but it was becoming the largest town in the American colonies, welcoming new people every day. Franklin rightly saw that wise preparation might prevent such a disaster. As he wrote in one of his pseudonymous editorials on the subject: “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”4 Ben’s idea was so popular that there were too many applicants. Additional fire companies were formed.
More than thirty years later, Ben boasted about Philadelphia’s fire protection: “I question whether there is a city in the world better provided with the means of putting a stop to beginning conflagrations; and in fact since these institutions, the city has never lost by fire more than one or two houses at a time, and the flames have often been extinguished before the house in which they began has been half-consumed.”5
But of course Ben made it more than just a safety issue. It was another opportunity for citizens to gather together to be citizens. It was another step in the “Join or Die” strategy. Philadelphia was becoming a world-class city because its people banded together to create a better life for them all. Franklin was in the middle of it, making things happen. He was just thirty years old when he formed the fire company. He had already established the Junto and library. All of these had spawned other similar groups around the region. In addition, Ben was proposing major upgrades of the City Watch program, suggesting a sort of progressive tax to fund professional constables. He also pushed the legislature to adopt paper currency, which sped up the economy (and gave him a print job). He was working hard to make Philadelphia a better place.
All this time he was also publishing the town’s leading newspaper, printing not only reports received from overseas but also local stories and opinion pieces on political issues. He was not only informing citizens, he was also engaging them. Edmund S. Morgan put it, “As a printer and publisher Franklin had his finger on the pulse of life in Philadelphia, and he was continually bringing companies of people together in associations to prove it.”6
Dream Job
After George Whitefield’s tumultuous conversion, his life changed rapidly. While Ben was amassing leather buckets at town meetings in Philadelphia, George was quickly becoming the toast of London. While Franklin was seeking to make the world a better place, starting in Philadelphia, Whitefield began summoning souls to a far better place, an eternity with God.
Back home in Gloucester, with a spiritual peace he had never known before, George struggled with his future direction. He clearly felt called into the ministry, but now he had second thoughts. It was his dream job, quite literally (he’d had dreams about being a preacher). It had been his mother’s longing and his own planned method to restore respect to his family. He wrote later about his time at Oxford, “I entertained high thoughts of the importance of the ministerial office.”7 Yet now he was stricken with humility, a keen awareness of his own insufficiency. In fervent prayers, he begged God not to send him into the ministry. Friends in Gloucester were urging him to seek ordination, so he wrote to friends in Oxford, asking them to pray for the opposite.
Someone recommended him to the local bishop, who explained that he never ordained anyone so young, but in this case he would make an exception. Finally realizing that holding out any longer would mean fighting against God, George was ordained on June 20, 1736, at just twenty-one years old. He had finally given up his insecurities and yielded to God’s call. “Known unto him are all future events and contingencies,” he wrote to a friend on that ordination day. “I have thrown myself blindfold, and I trust without reserve, into his almighty hands.”8
At a certain point in this time, George discovered something important: he could preach. He had practiced plenty during his boyhood and between errands at the inn. Now he found he was good at it. When he gathered Christian friends in Gloucester for Bible study, when they visited prisons, and when he returned to Oxford, he would speak about Scripture, and people liked it. All those quirks that had kept him from entirely fitting in at Oxford or even St. Mary’s now worked to his advantage—his dramatic style, his penchant for breaking into tears, even his cross-eyed stare. All of these traits made him a delight to listen to. And now he had a message and a passion for it. Cicero was right: you had to believe what you were saying, and you had to care about it. The “passions” that the acting manuals taught about were now springing up in his soul. George Whitefield had now experienced the new birth, and he wanted to share it with everybody.
A week after his ordination, George Whitefield returned to preach at the old church where he had gone to school, St. Mary de Crypt. He spoke on “The Necessity and Benefit of Religious Society,” which sounds like a snooze fest until you really get what he was saying. Using the text “Two are better than one” (Ecclesiastes 4:9), he challenged his church mates to spur one another on to greater experiences of faith, to hold one another accountable, to rejoice and weep with one another—in short, to be the church. It was a very Methodist message—the “Holy Club” had been a laboratory for just this sort of thing—but we also see a line of thought parallel to that of Ben Franklin, who was calling citizens to be citizens. “Let your practice correspond to your profession,” Whitefield preached.9 If you profess to be a Christian in this church—or a citizen in Philadelphia—live like it!
Later, George wrote to an Oxford friend about the experience of returning to his alma mater. “Curiosity, as you may easily guess, drew a large congregation together on the occasion. The sight at first a little awed me; but, I was comforted by a heart-felt sense of the divine presence, and soon found the unspeakable advantage of having been accustomed to public speaking when a boy at school, and of exhorting and teaching the prisoners.”10
The written text of Whitefield’s sermon still exists, and in it we can sense the passion he brought to this crowd. They were Christ’s soldiers, he said, charged with resisting the devil’s wiles. They were in danger of being Judas, who isolated himself and turned traitor.11 In the place where he had learned drama, George now dramatized the call of God, and with great effect.
“As I proceeded I perceived the fire kindled, till at last, though so young, and amid a crowd of those who knew me in my infant, childish days, I trust I was enabled to speak with some degree of gospel authority. Some few mocked, but most, for the present, seemed struck.” Even his description in the letter was dramatic. There’s a “fire kindled.” Hearers are “struck.” He even mentioned a report that his preaching drove fifteen people mad. “The worthy prelate, as I am informed, wished that the madness might not be forgotten before next Sunday.”12
The Big Time
Whitefield’s ordination (and a short time in Oxford to finish his degree) gave him credentials to serve in a church, but not a church to serve in. He found that church less than two months later, when an old college friend asked him to fill in as preacher at the prestigious Tower Church of London.
On August 4, 1736, he took a stagecoach there, praying all the way. In his journal, he noted that only a few years earlier he would have paid a lot of money, if he’d had it, to see a play in London. Now people would be seeing him. Once again, he was fighting his long-time battle with pride. It provided some much-needed “ballast,” he said, when people would see him walking down the street in his priestly garb and say, “There’s a boy parson.” In spite of this amazing opportunity, he was still little more than a child. In light of such humbling reminders, young George found some comfort in the apostle’s words to the “boy parson” Timothy—“Let no man despise thy youth” (1 Timothy 4:12 KJV).13
This young preacher from Gloucester was an instant sensation. “As I went up the [pulpit] stairs almost all seemed to sneer at me on account of my youth,” he wrote later, “but as I came down they showed me great tokens of respect.”14 He stayed two months in London, preaching at various venues during the week, meeting with soldiers and prisoners, but packing the Tower Church each Sunday. “His emotion was always fresh,” wrote one early biographer, “streaming from his heart as from a perennial fountain; and, unless the hearer could not feel, could not be touched by tenderness or awe, he was sure to find his soul made more sensitive. The hearts of most were melted in the intense heat of the preacher’s fervour like silver in a refiner’s furnace.”15
Shortly after this Tower Church experience, George felt called to go as a missionary to the American colony of Georgia. John and Charles Wesley had been serving there, and now they were sending letters to the Oxford Methodists requesting reinforcements. Whitefield felt they were talking to him—or rather, that God was talking to him through them.
Georgia was the newest of the American colonies, chartered just a few years earlier, in 1732. James Oglethorpe, a member of Parliament and social reformer, had envisioned this colony as the capstone of a policy of prison reform. His complaints about the conditions of London’s debtors’ prisons in the 1720s had led to the release of a substantial number of prisoners, but then these debtors were launched into an urban society with little work available, and many were resorting to crime (remember, this was the era of The Beggar’s Opera). Oglethorpe’s colonial idea was ingenious. Provide “the worthy poor” with new opportunities in the New World, keeping them out of debt, crime, and prison. Let them settle this southernmost terrain—which would then serve as a buffer region between the Carolinas and Spanish-held Florida.
From the early days of the Holy Club, the Wesleys had been visiting prisons as part of their Christian ministry, and George Whitefield eagerly joined them. So it’s no surprise that Oglethorpe’s grand scheme would find support with these young ministers. Charles Wesley actually served as Oglethorpe’s personal secretary during his time in Georgia in 1736. When Charles returned to England that December, he fanned Whitefield’s interest in the new colony.
“Georgia was an infant, and likely to be an increasing colony,” George journaled, “and the government seemed to have its welfare much at heart. I had heard many Indians were near it, and thought it a matter of great importance, that serious clergymen should be sent there.” It was the perfect combination of need and opportunity, an ideal outgrowth of his prison ministry, virgin territory for the gospel, the involvement of his friends, and a potential outreach to Native Americans. George even thought that Georgia might provide a respite from his increasingly hectic schedule. “Retirement and privacy were what my soul delighted in. A voyage to sea would, in all probability, not do my constitution much hurt; nay, I had heard the sea was sometimes beneficial to weakly people.”16
What could possibly go wrong?
All Ready but Not Yet
The next year proved to be one of the most fortuitous delays in religious history. Oglethorpe was in London, preparing to return to Georgia soon, but first he wanted to be commissioned by the king as a military officer. With rising tensions between England and Spain, and with Georgia’s proximity to Spanish Florida—especially the fort at St. Augustine—Oglethorpe wanted to have the military authority necessary to lead a colonial militia. This took some time. (Eventually he was made a colonel, and in 1739 he jumped into action, leading a siege of that Spanish fort.)
But for most of 1737, George Whitefield was all prayed up with no place to go. Oglethorpe kept rescheduling his departure, and Whitefield kept waiting. As he waited, people asked him to preach, which he gladly did, and his fame grew.
For the first few months of that year he was saying his goodbyes to family and friends in Gloucester and Bristol and dazzling the hometown crowds with his preaching. “During my stay, here, I began to grow a little popular,” he wrote about Gloucester. “God gave me honour for a while, even in my own country. I preached twice on the Sabbaths. Congregations were very large, and the power of God attended the Word; and some I have reason to believe were truly converted.”17
A few weeks later, he was sitting in a church in Bristol when the minister asked him to give a sermon. Soon crowds were flocking to hear him there, and not only on Sundays. “The whole city seems to be alarmed,” he wrote to his friend Gabriel Harris. “Churches are as full week days, as they use to be on Sundays, and on Sundays so full, that many, very many are obliged to go away, because they cannot come in. Oh pray, dear Mr. H., that God would always keep me humble, and fully convinced that I am nothing without him, and that all the good which is done upon earth, God doth it himself.”18
Some offered lucrative positions to keep him in England, but his heart was set on America. As he preached, he collected offerings for the poor in Georgia, something he would continue to do all his life.
George traveled to Oxford to see old friends and then to London seeking official approval for the Georgia mission. Oglethorpe was promising to depart soon, but this dragged on some more. George had time to travel back to Bristol and Gloucester and preach some more. This little “farewell tour” was turning into a full-blown revival.
His letters from that time show a continual amazement at the work God was doing through him, but also a growing frustration with the travel delays. He seemed a bit befuddled by his emerging popularity, but he was glad that it helped him spread the gospel and raise funds for the poor in Georgia. His note of October 25 to Gabriel Harris was typical:
We sail not for Georgia this month. I suppose you have heard of my mighty deeds, falsely so called, by reading the newspapers; for I find some back-friend has published abroad my preaching four times in a day; but I beseech . . . the printer, never to put me into his news upon any such account again, for it is quite contrary to my inclinations and positive orders. GOD still works here. The collections for the charity schools, in all the churches where I preach, are very large. All London is alarmed. Many youths here sincerely love our LORD JESUS CHRIST; and thousands, I hope, are quickened, strengthened, and confirmed by the word preached. I was never in better health, and never composed more freely. O praise the LORD, dear Sir, and pray that I may not be self-sufficient but humble.19
Eventually he decided to travel to Georgia not with Oglethorpe, but on a soldiers’ ship, which departed London in the last days of December and poked along the Thames and the Channel, waiting for favorable winds. At each port along the way, people would come to see George off. The vessel did not shove off from England until February 2, 1738.
A Fertile Year
Looking back over that year of delay and revival, we find at least four major developments in George’s ministry.
First, he developed multidenominational appeal. As he wrote to a friend, “Quakers, Baptists, Presbyterians, etc. all come to hear the word preached.”20 Though ordained an Anglican and headed for America as an Anglican missionary, George would never limit his message to denominational matters. He had a simple, biblical challenge to offer: “You must be born again.” This resonated with people of many different churches or no church at all. The dissenting movements in England—especially Baptists and Quakers—had long been pushing society to be less churchy and more biblical. The German Pietist movement had found support among these groups. In more recent years the Moravian missionary movement and authors such as William Law (A Serious Call) had been reawakening a simple faith among the English. They were ready for George Whitefield.
The Methodists were then still within the Anglican fold and would continue to be for quite some time. The Wesleys did not envision their group as a breakaway movement, but as a renewal and outreach endeavor that would strengthen the Anglican Church. Yet even in this early period, Whitefield began to encounter some opposition from Anglican clergy. Some pointedly opposed his doctrine of the new birth. Others feared that his popularity decreased attendance at their own services. Some objected to the offerings he was collecting for Georgia. Surely some were jealous. When George appealed to the bishop to see if there was any official reprimand in order, he got what amounted to a shrug. There was no problem, the bishop said, because George would be leaving the country soon.
Throughout his ministry in America and Britain, Whitefield would face opposition from churches, and often from Anglicans. He actually turned this to his advantage, flaunting his independence from any ecclesiastical organization. His message was bigger than any one church, and his crowds could not be contained in any structure.
Second, he learned to use the press. As that year of delay dragged on, George discovered the value of advertising, though he opposed it at first. “About the middle of September, my name was first put into the public newspapers,” he wrote. He saw the notice while having breakfast in London. It described the offering received by this “young gentleman going volunteer to Georgia” and gave details of his next preaching gig. “This advertisement chagrined me. I immediately sent to the printer, desiring he would put me in his paper no more.”21
Apparently someone had placed the ad in the paper and paid for it. The printer denied George’s request, saying “he would not lose two shillings for anybody.” Always fearful of his own pride, and also of the danger of seeming proud, George naturally had a bad feeling about self-puffery. But this was out of his hands, and so he could step back and examine the results. He noted that, through advertising, “people’s curiosity was stirred up more and more.” The event mentioned in the ad “was crowded exceedingly. . . . Henceforward, for near three months successively, there was no end of the people flocking to hear the Word of God.”22
These were not the first sermons to be advertised in newspapers, but we can safely say that, as time went on, Whitefield would use advertising more effectively than any preacher before him and most preachers since. He was helped by William Seward, a London stockbroker who became sort of a business manager for Whitefield. (It was Seward who placed that ad George saw over breakfast.) “Typical ecclesiastical entries in the [London] Daily Advertiser announced sermons by presenting the bare essentials: who was to preach, for what charity, in which church, and at what time. . . . By contrast, Seward ‘sold’ Whitefield to the readers, complete with advertising ‘puffs,’ appealing details designed to pique interest.”23
If you view advertising as proud and/or deceptive, you’ll have a problem with this—as George did at first. But clearly he began to see the advantage of getting the word out to the public, so he could get the Word out to the public, and he became a pioneer in these methods. In America, Ben Franklin and his Pennsylvania Gazette would help him do that.
Third, he became a published author. As George’s fame grew during this year, he received many requests for printed copies of his sermons. While, again, he was wary of self-promotion, he saw that this created much more of an audience for his message. London publisher James Hutton printed an early collection of George’s texts. This was a role Ben Franklin would assume in America—despite the fact that he thought George would have been better off without a printed record of his sermons. “His writing and printing from time to time gave great advantage to his enemies. Unguarded expressions and even erroneous opinions delivered in preaching might have been afterwards explained, or qualified . . . or . . . denied.” But the written record remained, giving George’s critics plenty of ammunition. “I am of opinion,” Ben wrote, “if he had never written anything he would have left behind him a much more numerous and important sect.”24
It’s a fascinating observation, offered long after the fact by a man who made lots of money publishing those very sermons. Though Ben was no theologian, he recognized that George was not a careful scholar, as other respected clergymen were (such as their contemporary Jonathan Edwards). George’s power came not from the brilliance of his thinking but from the compelling manner of his delivery—and perhaps from the simplicity of his message. That in itself might reveal a big difference between Ben and George. While Ben coveted (and received) the acclaim of the intelligentsia in various fields, George unapologetically stuck to his simple message of rebirth. Printing his messages would certainly fuel the critics who wanted more cerebral substance, but it would also spread that simple message to thousands who couldn’t hear him in person. Ben was probably right. Today, George lacks the respect given to, say, Jonathan Edwards, whose writings are much weightier. He left behind no Whitefieldist sect. And yet, it’s no stretch to say George is a spiritual forefather of just about everyone in the English-speaking world who claims to be “born again” in Jesus.
Fourth, he discovered the power of extemporaneous preaching. He had previously learned to craft a sermon, to write it out, and to read it dramatically. This is how good preaching was done in Anglican churches of the time. But John Wesley had accidentally discovered extemporaneous preaching one day in 1735 when he forgot his notes, and he had been using that method well. For George, the discovery occurred December 29, 1737. So often was he invited to speak that he usually carried notes with him. On this occasion, however, in the little town of Deptford, near London, he had forgotten. Still, he agreed to preach, fearfully at first, but then “without the least hesitation.”25 This style of preaching unleashed his power as a communicator, allowing him full use of his theatrical mannerisms. This in turn made him the most popular preacher of his generation.