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Spiritual Firestorm: How the First Great Awakening Rewired America | The American Story | Ep 3
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It's a frigid, bleak January Day, 1692. Slate sky, sharp wind rattling the bare trees in the sleepy Puritan town of Salem Village, Massachusetts. Two girls, 9 year old Betty Paris and her 11 year old cousin Abigail Williams, huddled together in the dim glow of a candle. They're just playing a game, something silly but secret. A fortune telling game involving an egg dropped in a glass of water. You're supposed to watch the way the ghostly shapes form, how the egg white curls in the glass and catch a glimpse of your future. Maybe great riches, maybe adventure, maybe a tall, handsome husband. It's a boredom busting activity that would certainly be forbidden by Betty's father, the Reverend Samuel Parris, if he knew that they were doing it, that is. But when Betty and Abigail peer into their glass, they don't see husbands or homes or happy futures. They see a coffin. Then something goes wrong. Horribly, horribly wrong. The girls begin barking like dogs. They shriek without warning, speaking strange unintelligible words. They clutch their heads in agony, convulsing, writhing on the floor, and curl themselves under the furniture as though trying to escape invisible claws. The town doctor William Griggs is quickly summoned. He examines them, his face growing more and more pale. He can't detect the obvious physical cause and so he provides the only diagnosis a Puritan village would accept. In New England in the late 1600s, the girls have been bewitched. Betty and Abigail point fingers first at Tituba, the Paris household slave who is from the Spanish West Indies. She's a witch, they say. She's tormenting us through dark forces. Days go by and the accusations begin to snowball. 12 year old Ann Putnam joins in. Her parents are tight with the Paris, then 17 year old Elizabeth Hubbard, an orphan who works as a maid in Dr. Grieg's own home, the very man who diagnosed this as witchcraft. Suddenly, Salem Village is aflame with panic. Disembodied spirits, the girls say. They're stabbing them, choking them, pricking them with pins. Soon the four girls accuse two more women of being witches. Sarah Good, a local beggar scraping by on handouts. And Sarah, a sickly widow shunned for her scandalous affair with an indentured servant. More girls pile on the accusations. The air in Salem is now thick with terror. The whispers are contagious. People are convinced the devil himself is loose in their midst, turning neighbors against neighbors in a frenzy of fear and suspicion. Now what started as a childish game spirals into a nightmare that will claim lives and shatter a community and echo throughout American history. But this isn't just a tale of hysteria. It reveals a deeper rot in the soul of colonial America, setting the stage for a spiritual turning point that will reshape the colonies.
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This is the American story, the Beginnings, adapted from the book of the same title by David Barton and Tim Barton. Episode 3 Spiritual Firestorm how the First Great Awakening Rewired America.
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In the late 1600s, many Europeans genuinely believed that humans could strike deals with the devil, granting dark powers to curse enemies or torment them in the spirit world. To the Puritans of Massachusetts, this wasn't some fairy tale passed around the fire. The devil wasn't just prowling around in some vague spiritual sense. So when those girls, Betty, Abigail, Ann and Elizabeth, claimed to be physically assaulted by invisible forces, when they flailed their limbs in seizures and screamed in voices that didn't seem to be their own, it didn't take long for the community to conclude that witches were at work. It was a full blown crisis that tapped into the deepest fears of people already on edge from the Indian wars and their harsh living environment. The accusations rolled like wildfire. First Tituba, the Paris family household slave. Then Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne. And then dozens more, including some of Salem's most respected citizens. By spring, the town jail overflowed with the accused witches. Men, women, even some children, all locked up awaiting judgment. A special court was hastily convened to handle the witch trials because the regular system couldn't keep up with the flood of accusations. Betty Paris never showed up in court. Her parents whisked her away to relatives in another town to escape the madness. Her cousin Abigail, well, she on the other hand, had become a star witness, accusing 57 people of witchcraft. Ann Putnam didn't hold back either. Testifying against 60 people, Elizabeth Hubbard went after 29. These girls were the epicenter of a storm that engulfed the entire village. The trials themselves were spectacles. The afflicted girls would spasm, contort, scream and writhe on the floor. They claimed that the Accused appeared to them as specters, ghostly spirits, urging them to sign the devil's book and join the dark side. Judges accepted the so called spectral evidence as legitimate evidence. Imagine that. If a teenager said she saw your ghost attacking her, that was enough to condemn you. Tituba, the first accused, cracked. Under relentless pressure, she implicated Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne, hinting at a whole network of witches lurking in the shadows, a conspiracy theory that only fed the paranoia. While Good and Osborn protested their innocence with desperate pleas, Tituba spun wild tales of Satan appearing to her in the form of a dog. She said she had also seen, quote, two rats, a red rat and a black rat, end quote, that commanded her to serve them. She admitted she had signed the devil's book in her own blood and seen Sarah Goode and Sarah Osborne's name written right beside hers. By confessing, Tituba saved her own life. Those who admitted guilt often got mercy while deniers faced the noose. It was a twisted logic that encouraged false admissions just to survive. The girls kept up their fits during interrogations, rolling in agony as the accused were grilled, their screams echoing off the wooden walls. Tuba and others testified that Sarah Good's specter attacked them, that she flew on broomsticks through the moonlit sk and hosted witches meetings in Hidden Groves. In July, Sarah Goode, Sarah Osborne and three other accused were carted to Gallows Hill, the wagon creaking in the strange silence as a somber crowd followed. They were hanged, their bodies swinging in the wind as the town watched in a mix of horror and righteous satisfaction. Then there was Giles Corey. He was an older man, stubborn as they come. He refused to plead guilty or not guilty, perhaps knowing either way led to his doom. For that defiance, his sentence was being pressed to death under heavy stones. In total, 19 accused witches were hanged. Fourteen women, five men, their lives snuffed out in a frenzy of fear. Five people died in the filthy jails. 200 more languished in cells, waiting for their turn. As much of a nightmare as Salem was, it wasn't isolated madness. It was part of a larger, darker pattern in Europe. A staggering fear. 500,000 people were executed for witchcraft accusations. Entire villages were decimated by hunts that stretched over decades. And before Salem's chaos, 300 new Englanders, mostly poor, middle aged women without family, the spinsters and the widows on society's edges, had faced those same charges. Over 30 of them were hung here in America. Why did America's body count stay relatively low compared to the bloodbath that dragged on for generations in Europe because at the height of the panic, there were Christian voices of resistance. Leaders stepped up pastors including John Wise, Increase Mather and Thomas Brattle, Men who were not afraid to challenge government when it strayed from biblical principles. They confronted the civil authorities, arguing that the courts were trampling biblical standards on evidence and due process. Boston minister Increase Mather put it bluntly, saying it would be better if 10 suspected witches should escape than one innocent person should be condemned. His words cut through the hysteria and slowly others began to agree. By October 1692, Governor William Phips finally stepped in, perhaps when the accusations hit too close to home. You see, even his own wife had been whispered about. Well, he shut down the special court and ordered the remaining suspects released. The madness fizzled, but it left the town in ruins. Tituba eventually recanted her confession, claiming her master had beaten it out of her with brutal force. But by then the trials were over and someone anonymously bailed her out. After 13 months in jail, she faded into obscurity. Perhaps, we don't know, starting a new life far from Salem's shadows. Five years later, Judge Samuel Sewell stood in his pew at Boston South Church and begged forgiveness, publicly owning the blame and the shame of his role, his voice trembling with regret. In 1706, Ann Putnam, by then a 27 year old woman haunted by her childhood actions, offered the only known apology from one of the accusers. She admitted that she had been deluded by the devil and begged God and the victims families for pardon. The scars in Massachusetts ran deep. The state passed laws in 1711 restoring the good names of the condemned and providing restitution for their families. But it was a small gesture toward mending the broken. Belief in witches didn't vanish overnight. But the Salem travesty marked the end of mass witchcraft prosecutions in America. Those pastors who helped halt the trials were not outliers. They continued the long tradition of clergy, shaping civil progress and liberty, acting as the moral compass for the Young Society. In 1636, Reverend Roger Williams and John Clark founded Rhode island as a haven for religious freedom, a place where dissenters could worship without fear of the whip or the stocks. In 1639, Reverends Thomas Hooker and John Davenport launched Connecticut, with Hooker drafting America's first written constitution. Called the Fundamental Orders. It was a document that laid out representative government rights in a way that would again echo through history. Reverend Nathaniel Ward wrote Massachusetts Body of Liberties in 1641, the continent's first Bill of Rights, listing protections against arbitrary power. And in 1681 Quaker minister William Penn founded Pennsylvania with its frame of government. It emphasized tolerance and equality, a blueprint for diverse communities, all living in peace. And then there's the Reverend John Wise. He was a pastor in rural Ipswich, Massachusetts, as early as 1687, nearly a century before American independence. Wise was already preaching that taxation without representation is tyranny and that the consent of the people is the foundation of government. And also that, quote, every man must be acknowledged equal to every other man. His ideas were so potent that in 1772, as war loomed on the horizon, Massachusetts Patriots reprinted his works to rally the colonies, reminding them of the biblical principles for just governance. Again and again, pastors were at the heart of shaping American civil liberty. Yet even with those solid foundations and strong spiritual leaders, part of the human condition is to fall into spiritual apathy. The Salem witch trials, while an extreme example, were symptomatic of churches sinking into decay. Puritans repeated the kind of oppression that they had fled England to escape. Their piety had turned rigid and cruel. By the early 1700s, a sense of decline gripped New England. Pastors lamented their congregations straying from their first love. Distracted by business, trade, and worldly woes, Their hearts had grown cold. God, they said, had sent judgments as warnings, such as the devastating wars with the Native Americans and the disaster in Salem. The New England colonies, they were barely a century old, and they already needed a reboot. At the First Congregational Church in Northampton, Mass. Embers began stirring. It was pastor Solomon Stoddard. He urged his congregation to pray for God to do a new work in their community. As Stoddard put it, the spirit of the Lord must be poured out upon the people, else religion will not revive. The sparks from those embers in the Northampton church would ignite something massive. A spiritual renewal that would spread from town to town and change America.
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If God should only withdraw his hand from the floodgate, it would immediately fly open and the fiery floods of the fierceness and wrath of God would rush forth with inconceivable fury and would come upon you with omnipotent power. And if your strength were 10,000 times greater than it is, yea, 10,000 times greater than the strength of the stoutest, sturdiest devil in hell, it would be nothing to withstand or endure it.
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That is an excerpt from Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. It's the most famous sermon by Pastor Jonathan Edwards. It's a sermon that became shorthand for Puritan doom and gloom. It helped pigeonhole Edwards as the ultimate stern Puritan, thundering about sin and hellfire. But Edwards was far more than that caricature. He was one of America's most brilliant minds of the 18th century, a powerhouse theologian, philosopher, scientist and psychologist. Born in Windsor, Connecticut, in 1703, Edwards was the son of a minister and a grandson of the legendary Solomon Stoddard, the pastor I mentioned earlier who was urging the congregation to pray for revival in the early 1700s. Jonathan Edwards he was a prodigy, grappling with the big questions about God, nature and existence even as a boy. He entered Yale College when he was 13 years old and graduated as valedictorian four years later. After brief stints pastoring in New York and Connecticut, he landed in Northampton, Mass. In 1726, where he was the assistant pastor to his grandfather. The following year, he married Sarah, a union that would produce 11 children and
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become the most model of devout partnership.
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Sarah was Edwards anchor, managing the household while he pursued his intellectual quests. When Edwards took over as senior pastor after his grandfather's death in 1729, he found his congregation spiritually flatlining. People were preoccupied with money, their faith dry and devoid of the heart of Christianity. Like his grandfather, Edwards longed for revival in his community as well as in his own life. Edwards had this quirky habit that paints him as the absent minded professor type. He would ride through rolling green meadows on horseback, lost in deep contemplation, ideas swirling in his head like leaves in the wind. As his thoughts struck, he would jot them down on a paper scrap and pin them to his cloak. He would return home literally covered in notes, like a walking inspiration board. Sarah would then help organize them for his future sermons and writing, a partnership that fueled his productivity. Edwards believed we experience God's grace not just through dusty books, but through the world around us. Nature was a divine canvas. He described his glimpses of this, for example, when thunderstorms rumbled across the the valley.
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I felt God, so to speak, at the first appearance of a thunderstorm. And I used to take the opportunity at such times to fix myself in order to view the clouds and see the lightning's play and hear the majestic and awful voice of God's thunder, which oftentimes was exceedingly entertaining, leading me to sweet contemplations of my great and glorious God.
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In 1734, the seeds planted in prayer by his grandfather and the Northampton congregation years earlier suddenly began to sprout. Revival erupted in Edwards church. He kept a track of it in a book called A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God, which read like a firsthand account of a miracle. Listen to this excerpt. His words capturing the electric the spirit
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of God began extraordinarily to set in and wonderfully to work amongst us. There was scarcely a single person in the town, either old or young, that was left unconcerned about the great things of the eternal world. This work of God, as it was carried on and the number of true saints multiplied, soon made a glorious alteration in the town, so that in the spring and summer following 1735, the town seemed to be full of the presence of God. It never was so full of love, nor so full of joy. There were remarkable tokens of God's presence in almost every house. It was a true it was a time of joy in families on the account of salvations being brought unto them, parents rejoicing over their children as newborn, and husbands over their wives, and wives over their husbands. There were many instances of persons that came from abroad on visits or on business, who partook of that shower of divine blessing that God rained down here and went home rejoicing till at length, the same work began to appear and prevail in several other towns in the country. In every place, God brought his saving blessings with him.
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Edwards was floored, stunned by the scope of the revival. Nearly everyone in Northampton showed signs of conversion or deep soul searching. This revival didn't stay local. It marked the dawn of the Great Awakening, a movement of Christian conversion and rededication that swept through the colonies like a flood. The revival bliss didn't last forever. At the First Congregational Church in Northampton, John Edwards was never one to shy away from truth and eventually got him into hot water. Fifteen years after the Northampton revival, Edwards offended some prominent church members when he denounced the actions of their wayward teenagers. From the pulpit, he tried to tighten the rules on communion and church membership, insisting that only the truly converted should partake. It split the congregation. Some saw him as too rigid. Others viewed his call for purity as an essential part of his role as pastor. But in the end, the church voted him out, and Edwards was dismissed. It was a devastating blow. Imagine being the pastor who sparked America's greatest revival, only to be fired by your own flock. And yet Edwards didn't fade away. He moved to Stockbridge, Mass. To serve as a missionary to Native Americans and to oversee a school for Mohawk boys. Now, some saw this as a demotion for such a renowned figure, a fall from grace, a kind of banishment to the frontier. But for Edwards, it was poetic, almost redemptive. You see, his uncle had negotiated land purchase and founded the mission years earlier. It was the first substantial mission since King Philip's war in the 1670s, which had devastated Christian missionary efforts among the Indian tribes. Edwards had always agreed with his grandfather Solomon Stallard's view that the colonial wars and the hardship were God's punishment for neglecting to bring the gospel to the Indians. That mandate was actually in the original Massachusetts Bay Charter. It was a covenant, and he felt it had been forgotten. In the pursuit of land and wealth at Stockbridge, he fulfilled his family's vision. There, he also wrote his most profound theological books, like Freedom of the Will and Original Sin. These works wrestled with human nature and grace, influencing philosophers and theologians for centuries. In 1758, Edwards began a final, all too brief chapter in his life. He was invited to be the president of the College of New Jersey, now known as Princeton University. It was a fitting capstone for a mind like his. But just 35 days after taking the job, tragedy struck. He died from a smallpox inoculation that went horribly wrong. He was 54 years old. It was a sudden end for a man who sparked so much life. But Jonathan Edwards had prepared the ground. He had given the colonies a vision of revival, a sense of expectancy. But it would take another preacher, a voice far louder, a presence far more theatrical, to to set the covenant ablaze. And when this preacher arrived, America had never seen anything like him.
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Born to raise the sons of earth Born to give them second birth.
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The lyrics to Hark the Herald Angels Sing it was co written by two British friends, John Wesley and George Whitfield. Whitfield was the 18th century equivalent of a viral sensation. The key lyric for Whitefield was in the song's second Born to raise the sons of earth, Born to give them second birth. Whitefield had just experienced this second birth that Jesus describes in the Gospel of John. A profound personal transformation. And Whitefield wanted as many people as possible to have the same experience. George Whitefield was born in Gloucester, England in 1714. As a child he devoured plays, skipping school to rehearse lines and perfect his delivery, dreaming of a life on the stage. Later, he would ditch the theater. But those skills fueled his preaching, turning sermons into performances that eventually captivated enormous audiences. At Pembroke College in Oxford, he waited tables for rich students to pay his way. It was a humble start, but that built resilience. There he joined a group called the Holy Club, led by John and Charles Wesley. These were the original Methodists, the students devoted to prayer and fasting and holy living. After constant frustration with his inability to measure up, Whitefield's understanding of Christianity completely shifted when Charles Wesley handed him a book. Here's how Whitefield described the I must
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bear testimony to my old friend, Mr. Charles Wesley. He put a book into my hands called the Life of God and the Soul of Man, whereby God showed me that I must be born again or be damned. I know the place. It may be superstitious, perhaps, but whenever I go to Oxford, I cannot help running to that place where Jesus Christ first revealed himself to me and gave me the new birth. A man may go to church, say his prayers, or receive the sacrament, and yet, my brethren, not be a Christian. How did my heart rise? How did my heart shudder like a poor man that is afraid to look into his account books lest he should find himself bankrupt. Holding the book in my hand, I thus addressed the God of heaven and Lord. If I am not a Christian, if I am not a real one, for Jesus Christ's sake, show me what Christianity is that I may not be damned. At last.
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That new birth experience became the driving passion in his life. It reshaped a theater kid into an evangelist. Ordained a deacon in the Anglican Church, Whitfield began preaching around London and was surprised that everywhere he showed up, larger and larger crowds appeared. He punctuated his vivid biblical storytelling with shouting tears and sweeping gestures. A famous actor at the time said, I would give 100 guineas if I could just say, oh, like Mr. Whitfield. In 1738, Whitefield visited America for the very first time, spending three months in Georgia, where he started an orphanage called Bethesda. It was a project that plunged him into debt for life. But he saw it as God's work, a beacon of charity amid colonial hardships. It was all reported on by his newspaper, named the Blaze. Back in London, churches stunned his unorthodox style. Too emotional, too loud. So he took to preaching to the outdoors, in streets and in fields, anywhere people could hear him and see him. And the crowds kept growing. Whitefield returned to America in 1739 for an ambitious tour of the colonies. He started preaching in Philadelphia, the New World's bustling hub of commerce and ideas. And Benjamin Franklin. When he saw him, he was hooked from the start. In his autobiography, Franklin described hearing Whitfield's voice from almost a mile away. He said its power just cut through the air. Franklin even crunched the numbers on crowd size, estimating based on how far Whitfield's voice carried in. Modern acoustic tests using computer models back up Franklin's estimates. Under ideal conditions, Whitfield could reach up to 60,000 people intelligibly, though 20 to 30,000 was more common in that era, before microphones. But his voice was a natural megaphone honed by practice. Benjamin Franklin later became Whitfield's hype man and publisher, printing ads, sermons and journals. From 1739 to 1741, America's print industry grew 85%, mostly due to Whitefield's related publishing that included supporters and critics who fueled the buzz in pamphlets. It was an 18th century media frenzy and Franklin was blown away by the transformation he was witnessing in Philadelphia.
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It was wonderful to see the change soon made in the manners of our inhabitants from being thoughtless or indifferent about religion. It seemed as if all the world were growing religious so that one could not walk through the town in an evening without hearing psalms sung in different families of every street.
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During his two year tour of America, Whitfield's message was really simple. You must be born again. Your parents, church membership, that didn't save you. Your outward morality didn't save you. Only a personal, heart changing encounter with Christ would change you. Typical preaching in the time involved ministers writing out their sermons in longhand and then reading them in boring, monotonous voices. But Whitefield memorized his sermons. He didn't use notes and he acted out biblical narratives. Here's an excerpt from one of his sermons that captures the oh, how amiable
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as well as all sufficient does the blessed Jesus now appear? With what new eyes does the soul now see the Lord? Its righteousness, Brethren, it is unutterable. Would you have peace with God? Away then to God through Jesus Christ who has purchased peace. The Lord Jesus has shed his heart's blood. For this he died. For this he rose again. For this he ascended into the highest heaven and is now interceding at the right hand of God.
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The crowds were captivated, crying, fainting waves of emotion sweeping through like a storm. On October 1740, Whitefield preached at Jonathan Edwards Church in Northampton. Even Edwards wept through most of it. His stoic demeanor totally cracked. Here's how Edwards wife Sarah described Whitfield's preaching in a letter.
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He makes less of the doctrines than our American preachers generally do, and aims more at affecting the heart. He is a born orator. A prejudiced person I know might say that this is all theatrical artifice and display, but not so will anyone think who has seen and known him. It is wonderful to see what a spell he casts over an audience by proclaiming the simplest truths of the Bible, Our mechanics shut up their shops and the day labourers throw down their tools to go and hear him preach. And few return unaffected.
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In one grueling year, Whitefield logged 5,000 miles by horseback and ship in the American colonies, preaching over 350 times from north to south. One quarter of all Americans heard him preach directly live. Other than the British king, Whitfield was the most famous man in America, with newspapers tracking his every move. His last sermon on that tour drew 23,000 people to Boston Commons, the largest crowd in colonial history up to that point. Now, fame, of course, has downsides, and for Whitfield, it included a chilly, distant marriage to his wife, Elizabeth. She would stay in England throughout his relentless travels. Their letters were sparse and strained. Everywhere he went, critics accused Whitfield of stirring up fanaticism. Because of the emotional displays by the crowds who hurt him, many pastors banned him from their churches. Whitefield and other revivalists were labeled enthusiasts and troublemakers. Itinerant pastors were accused of undermining the established local pastors. And often they did. The Great Awakening split colonists. The so called New Lights embraced revival, while the Old Lights defended tradition, splitting into factions which would become an American habit. But despite the differences, the Great Awakening became the defining American event. Thousands of local revivals morphing into one national change, not top down, but grassroots. The movement decentralized faith and empowered the ordinary people. From 1740 to 1742, as many as 50,000 people joined churches in New England alone, out of a population of just 3, 300,000. The Great Awakening took a battering ram to religious complacency. And in the process, it started battering against something else. Authority. And that spirit of resistance. Oh, it would not remain confined to religion.
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For 250 years, this country's philosophy has been that we are meant to live as free men and free women. Work free, move free, free to enjoy the life that we built without somebody holding us back. And most of the time we think that's, you know, that's the big term.
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You know what I mean?
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For more of the history that inspired this podcast series, be sure to read the American Story, the Beginnings by David Barton and Tim Barton, available now@wallbuilders.com. On a misty July morning in 1804, along the foggy banks of the Hudson river in New Jersey, two titans of America faced off in a duel. Bitter political rivalry and personal slights had led both of the men there. Vice President Aaron Burr and the former Treasury Secretary, Alexander Hamilton. They now stood 10 paces apart, pistols gleaming in the dawn light. Hamilton's witness in the duel claims that Hamilton fired in the air to preserve honor without any bloodshed. Burr, however, seething from his years of sleep, lights didn't hesitate. His shot struck Hamilton in the abdomen, a crack echoing across the water. Hamilton collapses, gets rushed back to New York and dies the next day. His death sparked a national mourning and national outrage. Here's the twist. Aaron Burr was the grandson of Reverend Jonathan Edwards. From Edward's pulpit of revival and redemption to Burr's path of political intrigue, dueling and eventual treason charges. I want to talk about complicated legacies. This is a family tree with branches twisting into light and shadow. But to be fair, the Edwards family tree bore a lot more good fruit. A study done in 1900 revealed that among his descendants were 13 college presidents, 65 professors, 30 judges, 100 lawyers, 80 public office holders, 100 missionaries, three mayors of large cities, three governors, three US senators, and, yes, one vice president. Further complicating the light and shadow is the fact that Jonathan Edwards owned at least two slaves. One historian describes Edwards as a combination of a person of his time and. And a person ahead of his time. So he treated his slaves as household members, even admitting them to full church communion in Northampton, a rare equality in spiritual terms. But they were still slaves. And yet at the same time, he condemned the cruelty of the slave trade. His writings show a tension between acceptance and a critique of slavery. George Whitefield's position on slavery was even more checkered. Early on in his travels through the southern colonies, he denounced the brutal abuse of slaves by their masters. He welcomed blacks into his revival meetings, helping convert black evangelists and church leaders. But by 1747, wealthy supporters gifted him a South Carolina plantation, complete with slaves, just to generate revenue for his Bethesda orphanage. The needs of the orphanage even drove Whitefield to advocate legalizing slavery in Georgia, where it was banned. Initially, he argued that without slavery, Georgia would not flourish like its neighbor South Carolina, and he wanted slave labor to fund his orphanage. Whitfield became an influential voice in getting slavery legalized in Georgia. Ben had become lifelong friends with Whitfit Whitfield, always the pragmatist. Franklin had been so impressed by Whitefield's preaching that he built an auditorium for him in Philadelphia. It became the first building of the University of Pennsylvania. Later, the campus added a bronze statue of Whitefield, which stood for 100 years until the Ivy League school took it down in reaction to the Black Lives matter riots in 2020. At age 55, Whitfield ignored dire health warnings. He had asthmatic colds that left him gasping, his body worn out from decades of travel. And on September 29, 1770, he preached for two hours outdoors to 6,000 people in New Hampshire. His voice was still booming.
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Works quarks a man get to heaven by works. I would as soon think of climbing to the moon on a rope of saddle.
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It was a fitting finale, rejecting salvation by human effort. That night he went home, tucked himself into bed, and died in his sleep, his heart finally giving out. George Whitfield's impact in the great awakening and 18th century culture is hard to overstate. Seven American tours heard by an astonishing 80% of all the people that lived in the colony. Over 10 million attendees in a nation of just 3 million, meaning that people heard him multiple times. His message seeped into the cultural fabric of America. Before the Great Awakening, the colonies Colonies acted like separate nations with different currencies, economies, militias, religious tensions, and even border wars. But Whitefield's preaching up and down the Eastern seaboard did more than anything turn the isolated, squabbling colonies into one country. It helped erode the barriers of geography, denominations, and rivalry. There was now a shared experience, a sense that God was doing something across all 13 colonies, and the national consciousness was born. The Great Awakening was colonial America's biggest social upheaval before the Revolutionary War. Whether you loved it or hate it, you could not ignore it. Because the Great Awakening transformed the colonies. It broke the monopoly of state churches, it decentralized authority. It gave ordinary people permission to challenge the elite. In this Awakening, colonists learned to resist and resist together. That habit of resistance prepared them for something. The American Revolution. As historian Alice Baldwin documented, the sermons of the Great Awakening were vital in shaping America's unique view of civil and religious liberty. She said, there is not a right assured in the Declaration of Independence, which had not been discussed by the New England clergy before 1763. The Constitutional Convention and when written, the Constitution were children of the pulpit. Before the Revolution, before the Declaration, before the Constitution, there was the Great Awakening. Without it, America, most of the likely would never have been born. It was foundational in preparing Americans in the biblical character and worldview necessary for lasting independence. It also molded young men who became our Founding Fathers. Men like a 22 year old Virginian named George Washington who was just about to experience the brutal reality of combat for the very first time.
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Coming up on the American Story, the Beginnings.
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A bullet finds General Braddock ripping through his arm and into his chest. He crumples to the ground, blood soaking his coat. Washington wheels around and dismounts. Kneeling beside Braddock, Washington feels lightheaded, his own body severely depleted. He's in excruciating pain from weeks long battle with dysentery and he tries to make out Braddock's words. Then, with swift determination, he swings back onto his horse. No time to register the pain coursing through him as he settles into the saddle. The air is still thick with smoke and bullets and Washington is a tall, easy target. He draws his sword, charging ahead into the maelstrom. A bullet then rips through his coat, yet somehow fails to graze him. He is at home on horseback and there is a strange calm about him in this wicked battle storm. Just a reminder, I'd love you to rate and subscribe to the podcast and pass this on to a friend so it can be discovered by other people.