Henry Imler February 6th, 2007

Harry S. Stout, professor of History, Religious, and American Studies at Yale University paints a dramatic picture of George Whitefield in the biography, The Divine Dramatist. It is Stout’s contention that Whitefield was a major catalyst, albeit a somewhat unintentional one, in the formation, or at least the development of several key American attitudes. This goes so far as to call the English Whitefield, one who was never really that interested in politics, an American patriot. While the above is a major thrust of Whitefield’s contribution to America, much of the work centers around Whitefield as a person. Stout shows the how the seeds sown in Whitefield’s youth, the sense of divine greatness in works for the Lord and a love and talent for dramatics, fueled and gave rise to his resounding success. Center to this is an analysis of how the social circumstances and the manipulation of those circumstances by Whitefield lead to his astounding success.

One of the first things a reader will notice when reading this text is the lack of in-line citations. This feature is there by design. This lack is due to the fact that the book in its first form was part of a writing series that specifically required the lack of in-line citations. This lack does not mean that the book does not draw off of adequate sources. For example, in the section where he discusses the sourcing, Stout goes through an extensive list of the primary and secondary sources that he used, most of which is the writing and correspondence from Whitefield. For example, In addition to these primary sources, Stout also draws off of many secondary sources that illuminate not only the life of Whitefield, but also the cultures that Whitefield found himself in. For instance, if one is wanting to review the reasons behind Stout’s depiction of the Puritan attitudes towards the theater, one is referred to Edmund Morgan’s article “Puritan Hostility to the Theater,” found in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society. So, despite initial frustration with the citation method, Stout does provide a method to double check his work. I just involves more work on the readers part.

One of the weaker points of the book is Stout’s insistence that Whitefield was an anti-theologian. Stout goes to great length to demonstrate the indifference that Whitefield had towards his schooling and contrasts this well with the opposite attitude towards theater. It is suggested that his limited interest in schooling is evidence of a corresponding lack of interest in theology. Furthering this point, Stout also suggests that since Whitefield refused to join or form a denomination, this indicated that Whitefield was not overly concerned with matters of theology. However, this stance fails to adequately consider the enormous attachment that Whitefield placed on Calvinism. Stout goes to great lengths to show Whitefield’s commitment to Calvinism, and at the same time maintains that Edwards was the theologian while Whitefield was the communicator and motivator. What is needed to help resolve this tension is an analysis of the content of Whitefield’s works, such as his sermons and journals. At times the content is mentioned briefly, but in order to adequately answer the question of whether or not Whitefield’s attitude towards theology, a more careful analysis is needed.

Perhaps the weakest claim was that Whitefield was an American patriot. The other weak claim, that Whitefield was not much in the way of being an theologian, at least runs throughout the whole book. This, claim, that Whitefield was a patriot, was worked into the book bit by bit, starting with a sense of a special calling to the Americas, and culminating with the great show of patriotism in Whitefield’s support of Franklin. However, this argument suffers from a confusion of terms. If Stout merely argued that Whitefield was a sympathizer or a supporter of the American cause against England that would have been fine and there is sufficient and perhaps overwhelming evidence for such a claim. However, to label someone as a patriot goes further than merely being a sympathizer or supporter. Being a patriot denotes something much more, one who is a member of the nationalistic cause and going so far as to actively support and participate in the cause. Stout does not go this far in his portrayal of Whitefield. This is not to say that Whitefield was not a firm supporter of the American cause, nor that Whitefield did not help to nurse some of the key attitudes in America, but to say that Stout goes too far when he labeled Whitefield a patriot because he was not a member of it.

The strongest area of the book is the depiction of the person of Whitefield. In the person of Whitefield, Stout describes a person who was almost the antithesis of Jonathan Edwards as presented in Marsden’s work, Jonathan Edwards, A Life. Several times in the book Stout drawls parallels and contrasts between the two people. In Whitefield one sees the driving force behind the growth and mass appeal of the movement; in Edwards one sees the intellectual backbone of the Great Awakening. While Edwards was a immaculate scholar who was terrible with people and often a victim of circumstance, Whitefield was the transcendent people person, able to talk to anyone about anything the while manipulating circumstances to aid his cause and calling. This contrast illuminates in greater detail the portions of Noll’s book, America’s God pertaining to how Whitefield set fire to the Great Awakening and Edwards gave it intellectual stability.

Despite the frustrating, albeit justified, lack of in-line citation, the book presents a compelling case of how George Whitefield came to prominence and affected the way religion was practiced and looked at in America. Through the giving of this picture, the reader is able to get a glimpse of how the Colonists, the Scottish, and the English views on religion developed during his lifetime.

• Christianity , Religion
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