3. INDEPENDENCE – AND THE NEW REPUBLIC

THE AMERICAN "GREAT AWAKENING" OF THE MID-1700s

Then the dynamic seemed to begin to stall somewhat, only to get underway again with the arrival of George Whitefield to America at the end of the 1730s.  Whitefield would preach a message of spiritual revival which would reach deeply into the hearts of Americans, from Georgia in the South all the way north to Maine.

When Whitefield was a student at Oxford University, he befriended Charles Wesley, who in 1733 invited him to become involved in his brother John's Holy Club ... the "Methodists," as they were contemptuously called by fellow students – because of their efforts to discipline themselves to a life of holiness.  But try as Whitefield might, he just could not achieve the holiness he craved, and finally crashed spiritually, only then to be filled by a strange new spirit, which he recognized came solely from the grace of God, not from Whitefield's own efforts to be holy.  This discovery would stand at the basis of everything Whitefield was to teach and preach from that point on. 

Finally ordained to pastor the area of Bristol (England) in 1736, he found that his message of immediate salvation through simple repentance before God was touching the hearts of the British working classes, the way the doctrinal and ritualized pattern of Church of England worship did not.  Soon, Whitefield had a huge revival ministry going on in England, even in its fields and streets.

But in 1738 he felt called to go to the new colony of Georgia, where, once there, he took a great interest in building an orphanage (his Bethesda Orphanage).  Thus after a short stay in Georgia, he returned to England to raise funds for his orphanage project.   To raise that money (and bring his listeners to salvation at the same time), he took his preaching wherever he could, to churches, or, as back in England, to the streets and fields if necessary.  This very unorthodox method of preaching to the masses gained him a great deal of attention, both positive and negative.  Thousands would come out to hear his preaching, falling into tears of repentance and calling for God to retake the lead in their lives. 

Whitefield preaching on the street in town

   

Now, Whitefield undertook to cover the broader reach of the colonies, taking himself to Pennsylvania with the intention of founding an orphanage there in partnership with the Moravians (a large religious group in the rural region north and west of Philadelphia, who founded towns of their own named Bethlehem and Nazareth!).  On his way there, he found himself preaching every step of the way – often several sermons a day!  Then Tennent and Edwards invited Whitefield to New Jersey and Massachusetts to preach.   And thus it was that Whitefield's open-air revival method reached north.^[1]

Most surprisingly, the greatest American sage of the time, Ben Franklin, found himself warmed at least intellectually by this massive religious revival of Whitefield's.  In fact, he personally saw to the publishing of forty or more of Whitefield's sermons on the front page of his newspaper, the Pennsylvania Gazette.  Indeed, Franklin and Whitefield formed a friendship that lasted the entire span of Whitefield's remaining life (he died in America on a preaching tour in 1770).

Once again, there were Christians who found all this open-air activity rather un-Christian – because it did not occur in churches with people properly arranged in their pews in front of real pulpits.  Also, the idea that everyone should be called to repentance for their sins seemed scandalous for those "proper" Christians who were quite certain that they had nothing serious to repent of.  Such repentance was to be directed only to wastrels and scoundrels, not proper Christians.  Also there simply was a certain amount of bitter jealousy on the part of frustrated pastors who watched the huge crowds gather in the fields – when they still faced somewhat empty pews on a Sunday morning.  It just wasn't right.  Eventually even church leaders, or the "Old Light" group began to challenge the theological correctness of the so-called "New Light" revivalists – causing splits to occur within the traditional denominations, especially the Congregationalists of New England and the Presbyterians of the Middle Colonies.