The Divine Dramatist

THE DIVINE DRAMATIST Whitefield clearly fit the second category. His whole life was directed by the personalities from Scripture that he characterized and embodied in the pulpit. He lived his life for the public so exclusively and single-mindedly that his private life shrank into a small and relatively insignificant interlude between the big performances. Where many dissenters from John Bunyan onward tried to infuse their private lives with spiritual “drama,” Whitefield sacrificed a private life to live wholly for his public.

In pursuing information on Whitefield’s private life, one is struck by the paucity of information regarding his most intimate dealings with family and friends. This too provides important clues to his character that will be pursued in separate chapters on early methodist women of the revival and on Whitefield’s own courtships and marriage. For the most part, he confined his energies and attentions to allies, male and female, in the methodist cause of revival. But in the case of Benjamin Franklin we find a fascinating exception that, like Whitefield’s relationship with the theater and with women, has not been fully appreciated. Through that friendship we discover clues to both personalities that cannot be clearly seen in any other of their relationships.

As drama supplies the context for Whitefield’s new brand of revivalism in this biography, “mass marketing” constitutes the means whereby he attracted — and directed — his mass religious following. Besides being a consummate performer, he was a self-promoter with sure business instincts. Earlier than his clerical peers he learned to exploit the emerging world of print journalism to promote his tours. He cared little whether he elicited adoring praise or vicious criticism: both served his purposes well. Through his own literary and journalistic innovations he succeeded in creating an image and presence that was larger than life. His Journal (itself an innovation in its printed form), together with newspapers and a letter-writing network of friends and secretaries, supplied the marketing apparatus for creating a truly transatlantic revival. xxii