George Whitefield, Spectacular Conversion, and the Rise of Democratic Personality

Abstract “I think I am never more humble than when exalted,” wrote George Whitefield in his journal entry for Sunday, 21 January 1739 (Journals 194).1 Ostensibly meant to invoke the conventional Christian belief in empowerment through meekness and yet perceptibly at odds with it, this sentiment is reiterated throughout the spiritual autobiography of the iconoclastic Anglican minister who between 1739 and 1770 undertook an enormously influential series of preaching “tours” in colonial America. By no means the first evangelical minister to enthuse an American audience-Jonathan Edwards had recorded a cluster of “surprising conversions” in the Connecticut River valley in 1735-Whitefield is yet widely credited with launching an intercolonial religious revival of unprecedented scope and duration, which many have argued definitively altered the state of social and political life in the colonies. Known as the Great Awakening, this grass-roots religious movement democratized American religion by shifting the balance of power between minister and congregation.2 The deference traditionally accorded the Puritan clergy gave way to a spirit of popular criticism while the respectful silence customarily observed in Puritan churches was broken by the cries and groans of a congregation whose religious experience was, according to their conservative detractors, increasingly “enthusiastic.” Both developments were legitimated if not explicitly sanctioned by prominent members of the “New Light,” or evangelical, ministry. Many students of the Great Awakening and its aftermath have suggested its central role in the development of an American revolutionary ideology, a development enabled, I would argue, by Whitefield’s strategic reconciliation of power and humility.