March 10, 2026 • 38 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, during the 1730s and 1740s, George Whitefield traveled through colonial America preaching revival sermons that drew enormous crowds. His voice became one of the defining forces of the First Great Awakening.
Among those who followed Whitefield’s rise was Benjamin Franklin. Working as a printer in Philadelphia, Franklin published many of Whitefield’s sermons and helped circulate them widely throughout colonial America. Although Franklin approached religion with skepticism and did not share Whitefield’s theology, the two men developed a lasting friendship built on mutual respect.
Randy Peterson, author of The Printer and the Preacher, shares the story of Benjamin Franklin and George Whitefield and explains how their partnership connected the revival culture of the Great Awakening with the expanding world of the colonial printing press.
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib, and this is our American stories,
the show where America is the star, and the American
people coming to you from the city where the West begins,
Fort Worth, Texas. They were the most famous men in America.
They came from separate countries, followed different philosophies, and led
dissimilar lives, but they were fast friends. No two people
(00:34):
did more to shape America in the mid seventeen hundreds.
Here to tell the story is Randy Peterson, author of
The Printer and the Preacher, Ben Franklin, George Whitfield, and
the surprising friendship that invented America. Let's take a listen.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Who would you say were the most famous people in
America in the seventeen forties and seventeen fifties. This is
a few decades before the Revolutionary War. So think back
in your history mind to who was famous at that point.
You might say George Washington, but he really wasn't around yet,
(01:15):
he wasn't in the public consciousness yet. You might say
Benjamin Franklin, and you would be kind of right about that.
But there was somebody else that seemed to be even
more of a sensation in that era. In America. It
was the British preacher George Whitfield. George Whitfield was born
(01:37):
in seventeen fourteen in England. His widowed mother ran an In.
George was a very smart kid. They thought he might
have a future in the ministry perhaps, which would be
a very respectable profession. He wouldn't have to apprentice in
a trade or something. So they wanted to send him
(01:59):
to school, so they sent him to what they called
a grammar school. It was preparatory for college. Eventually, George
did well there. He was goofing off sometimes, but he
especially loved theater. He had a theater teacher that just
was full of energy and taught him how to act,
how to speak, how to make gestures, how to capture
(02:23):
an audience, and George loved that. Now the end, his
mother ran came on hard times and so they didn't
have a lot of money and they thought they might
not be able to afford college. It turned out that
Oxford University had a program where certain poorer students could
get through college get their degree by being servants to
(02:47):
richer students, and so that was sort of demeaning. But
George became a servant to richer students, kind of a
butler there as the other students went to college. He
would shine their shoes and get them food and stuff.
But he also was able to attend classes and to
get his degree. I think this was important in George's
(03:09):
life because as brilliant as he was, he learned humility.
He learned to serve. At Oxford, George Whitfield met two
very important friends, John Wesley and Charles Wesley. John was
a bit older and he was sort of a teacher's
assistant there at the school. Charles was a classmate of George's.
(03:33):
They also had a group of people they called the
Holy Club. This was an interesting group because they were
all religious. They were church involved, but they wanted something deeper.
They wanted to get more serious about their faith, and
so they were methodical about their prayer life. They were
methodical about their Bible study. They were methodical about meeting
(03:57):
together for fellowship. They were methodical about doing good deeds
and going out into the community, visiting people in prison
and visiting sick people. They were methodical about their faith
so much that their detractors began calling them the Methodists.
And that's where we get that term now George Whitfield
(04:17):
wanted all of that too. He wanted to be a
methodical in his faith, and so he was a member
of the Holy Club. But here's an interesting thing that
as we look back in history, that all three of
those people, George Whitfield, John Wesley, and Charles Wesley, perhaps
some of the other members of the group, experienced a
(04:39):
later conversion. The method was not enough for them. It
wasn't enough to pray and read the Bible and go
to church and do all these religious things. Each of
them reported that God individually connected with them at a
heart level, at an emotional level, where they emotionally said
yes to what God wanted to do in in them.
(05:00):
It wasn't just a matter of doing religious things. It
was a matter of opening their hearts to God. And
so there's a famous conversion of John Wesley where he
says his heart was strangely warmed and that was his experience.
It was a heart thing. George Whitfield had a similar experience,
actually a couple of years earlier than John. He talked
(05:21):
about his abiding sense of the pardoning love of God,
that there was something emotional that grabbed him. This is
important because this became George's message in his preaching later on,
and it was also an important part of the Wesleys ministry.
We're not going to talk about them so much, but
(05:43):
George Whitfield, wherever he went, wherever he preached, he was
inviting people to get beyond religiosity, to get beyond just
church involvement, to get beyond all that and have a
personal experience of the Living God in their heart. George
Whitfield was ordained in seventeen thirty six, having graduated from Oxford.
(06:07):
He got his degree and he began to look around
for churches where he might preach. Wherever he got the
opportunity to preach, they loved him. He was really good
at this preaching thing. People appreciate it the way he
brought passion to his ministries. In that time, a lot
(06:28):
of the preaching in England and later in America was
pretty dry. It was very academic. It was about ideas.
Preachers read from manuscripts. In some cases they were trying
to be impressive with their are audition, with how much
they knew and to kind of showing off their great intelligence.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
And you've been listening to Randy Peterson. He's the author
of The Printer and the Preacher, Ben Franklin, George Whitfield,
and the surprising friendship that invented America. Right now, we're
learning about the preacher that seminar experience he had getting
into Oxford, not through his scholarship, but through well, sort
(07:12):
of a kind of indentured servitude. He had to serve
the wealthier kids. Whitfield learned humility from this experience. When
we come back, more of the story of the Printer
and the Preacher here on our American Stories, Leehabib Here,
as we approach our nation's two hundred and fiftieth anniversary,
(07:33):
I'd like to remind you that all the history stories
you hear on this show brought to you by the
great folks at Hillsdale College, and Hillsdale isn't just a
great school for your kids or grandkids to attend, but
for you as well. Go to Hillsdale dot edu to
find out about their terrific free online courses. Their series
on communism is one of the finest I've ever seen. Again,
(07:53):
go to Hillsdale dot edu and sign up for their
free and terrific online courses. And we continue with our
American Stories and with Randy Peterson and the story of
(08:15):
Ben Franklin and George Whitfield's remarkable and surprising friendship, one
that shaped American life and certainly mid seventeenth century America.
Let's pick up where we last left off here is
author Randy Peterson.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
George Whitfield challenged that just by the nature of his work,
it was not brilliant new ideas. It was the same
invitation that God has been offering since biblical times, that
you must be born again. That there was a commitment
he was calling people too, and he often did it
(08:55):
without notes. He used his dramatic gifts to make it interesting,
but it wasn't about exalting his own reputation. It was
about inviting people into a relationship with God. There's one
great story about the leading actor in London at the
time was a man named David Garrick, and he was
(09:16):
quoted as saying, Oh, I would give one hundred guineas
just to be able to say the word oh. Like
George Whitfield.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
The definition we used to get preaching in seminary is
that preaching is God's truth coming through personality. That's what
preaching is. It's God's truth coming through personality.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
And so he began to make a name for himself
in England in seventeen thirty six, seventeen thirty seven. In
seventeen thirty eight, he felt God's call to go to
America as a missionary to the colony of Georgia, which
was the most recent colony established. It was established for well,
(09:59):
for people who couldn't pay their bills in England. They
were thrown in debtors prison in England. But man named
Oglethorpe had the brilliant idea, let's start a colony in
America where these people can get a second chance, where
they can begin to build their lives anew and so
they did that. The problem was that Georgia was then
(10:21):
full of people who couldn't pay their bills, who didn't
have a sense of responsibility to the larger community. There
were some criminals in that group as well, and so
it was a rough and tumble society. John and Charles
Wesley had both been there in the previous years and
they had a terrible time. They did not have successful
ministries at all there. But George felt that maybe well
(10:43):
he felt God was calling him there, and so he
went there and in George's ministry. There, he listened, he
paid attention, He got a sense of what the people
wanted and needed. He learned to speak their language and
to have an effect on the people around him. And
one of the things he learned was that what they
really needed was an orphanage. In this rough and tumble society,
(11:07):
there were a lot of kids who were abandoned and
neglected and needed a safe place to grow up. And
so George determined to build an orphanage there and that
really became his passion for the rest of his life,
that he was raising money for this orphanage in Georgia.
He came back to America many times after that and preached,
(11:30):
and whenever he preached, he raised money not for his
own ministry, not to become rich himself, but to support
this orphanage, to create a place where kids could learn
and grow and learn about God. At the end of
that year in Georgia, George Whitfield returns to England and
he's there for maybe a year, but that's when his
(11:52):
ministry really takes off, and there are a number of
key developments in that time. Thing there were a number
of churches in England. This later happened in America too,
where churches they didn't like his new style. He was
a little too popular for them. They didn't like the
(12:13):
fact that people were flocking to hear him and leaving
their churches.
Speaker 4 (12:17):
On Whitfield's first preaching tour when he arrived, specifically in
Newbury in seventeen forty, when Whitfield came through the first time,
that he was welcome to preach in the pulpit. But
when Whitfield came back a second time, he wasn't allowed
to preach. But Whitfield was here for just a few
days and then he left and he was gone. And
so you have this whole network of all these itinerant
(12:39):
New Light ministers who are also preaching around different churches.
And then if people experience the New Birth, and then
they go back to their churches and they start to
want that similar type of preaching from their pastors, and
their ministers are not giving that type of preaching to them,
and not just that type of preaching, but that essential
message of what it means to be truly a Christian
(13:01):
and to experience that new birth through conversion. And so
these people are being kicked out of their congregations and
so in many ways. Yes, Whitfield has sort of stimulated
this new movement. But the real people who are carrying
this on and who found this church are a mix
of these local revival itinerant ministers and lay people.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
And so they closed their doors to him. He might say,
could I preach in your church? And they say no, no,
And so he, by necessity would find some outdoor place
to preach, sometimes in a field. Just set up a
platform in a field, and people would be able to
come from miles around and with their carts and horses,
(13:43):
and they'd just come and sit and listen to George Whitfield.
Speaker 5 (13:47):
There's some wonderful cows, like of a Connecticut farmer, and
he talked about how people had left the plow with
the animal in the middle of the field and they
would say, Whitfield is coming, Whitfield is coming, and they
went running. And then he went looking across the field
and saw this big cloud of dust, and he wondered
what it was, and he realized it was a dust
from all the horses and carts that were going down
the road to hear Whitfield preach.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
In that process, George Whitfield began preaching to the common
folk and not the upper class who came to church,
but people who sometimes were ignored by the churches, just
the common people, including coal miners. This was an important
industry in England at the time. This was their energy source.
But these coal miners were often just kind of too dirty,
(14:30):
too unchurched for the churches to care about. And yet
here was George Whitfield preaching this passionate message to the
coal miners, setting up shop outside of the coal mines,
and when the coal miners would get out of work,
they would come and listen to this amazing preacher preach
to them. There's an amazing story that George writes in
(14:50):
his journal about one particular coal miner that he spoke
to after a meeting, and he'll never forget that this
man's face was blackened with the coal dust. But this
man was moved to tears, and tears were streaming down
his face and making little rivulets in the cold dust
on his face, and so he had this streaky face
(15:12):
as he was responding to the invitation of God. Seventeen
thirty nine marks an important development in George's ministry. He
goes back to America and he's going to get to
the orphanage and check in on what's happening there. But
he starts in Philadelphia, the center geographically the center of
(15:34):
the Eastern Seaboard there it was also the largest city
in the colonies at the time. And so he goes
to Philly and he starts preaching there. Now in Philadelphia
is a man named Ben Franklin. He's got his own
story of how he got there. We're not going to
get into that. But Ben was established now as a
(15:54):
printer in Philadelphia and the publisher of the leading weekly
newspaper there.
Speaker 4 (16:00):
Jamin Franklin is reading stories in newspapers that he's getting
from London about this new upstart preacher, George Whitfield, and
he himself sees an opportunity to latch onto that and
to what Whitfield's doing, and so he before Whitfield arrives
in Philadelphia, before he ever gets there, Franklin has already
been publishing that he's coming and publishing in the Philadelphia
(16:21):
Gazette some of his sermons and some other things. So
people already know who Whitfield is.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
And you've been listening to author Randy Peterson, and his
book is The Printer and the Preacher Ben Franklin, George
Whitfield and the surprising friendship that invented America. And we
had just heard about that early meeting and how Franklin
was ahead of the curve, wanting to bring Whitfield to Philadelphia.
(16:48):
So he wrote about him, wrote about what was going
on in England and in London. And of course when
you're in the newspaper business, you want to attract eyeballs,
and Ben Franklin unders that. Moreover, what we learned here
about this preacher is his talent. One of the foremost
actors of his day, the Brad Pitt of his day.
David Garrick often commented that he wished he could just
(17:11):
speak and oh or just speak as beautifully, as brilliantly,
as passionately as Witfield did. So we went out into
the fields and met the ordinary people where they lived
in front of coal mines, out in fields, and of
course there was nothing anyone could do about God's spirit,
the Lord's spirit coming through. When we come back more
(17:34):
of this remarkable story here on our American stories. And
(18:08):
we've returned to our American stories and the story of
the printer and the Preacher.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
Let's pick up.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
Where we last left off with author Randy Peterson.
Speaker 4 (18:18):
So they're in this print culture where they're already hearing
about these mass preaching services that no one else has
ever experienced before in England at the time, and at
this time in Whitfield is about in his mid twenties,
and so he's young. And so here's this upstart young
celebrity coming too. Again, this is in America, this is
(18:40):
part of the British Empire, and so here's one of
our fellow British citizens who's coming. People are already primed
to receive his preaching.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
And so George begins preaching in central spots in Philadelphia.
The christ Church of Philadelphia had closed their doors to him,
and they were really afraid that there would be too
many people that it would ruin the church building. And
so he set up shop a block away second in
Market on the courthouse steps, and people thronged the streets
(19:11):
in front of him.
Speaker 5 (19:12):
When Whitfield was telling the story of Abraham about to
sacrifice this on Isaac, the audience has said they were
so caught up in his description and his gesticulation that
when he raised the hand like this or people said
they could see a knife in his hand, and they
were yelling, don't, Abraham, don't, because it was so vivid,
it was so powerful, and it had an electrifying effect
(19:36):
on the people who heard him.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
Ben Franklin had heard reports from England that George Whitfield
spoke in some field in England somewhere to twenty thousand people,
and Ben he had a skeptical mind. He was questioning
that could any human voice actually reach twenty thousand people.
So he decided to test it out scientifically. He was
(20:01):
Benjamin Franklin, after all, and so his scientific mind decided
to pace out the distance. He started at the courthouse
steps where George was preaching, and he started walking. He
walked a block away, and he could still hear George Whitfield.
He walked a little further, he could still hear George Whitfield.
He measured how far it was before he couldn't hear
(20:24):
George Whitfield anymore. He measured that out, and he did
the math on it, and he determined that thirty thousand
people could hear the voice of George Whitfield. That's how
powerful his voice was.
Speaker 6 (20:37):
Thousands and thousands of people went to hear him, and
of course they wrote, their friends and their relatives. So
when Whitfield went from one place to another, there was
a ready audience of thousands of people rushing him to
see him. Even Benjamin Franklin said, I went to hear
Whitfield determined not to be moved, and by the end
(20:57):
of his talk, I had empty my pockets, you know,
into the collection plate. Whitfield had two eyes that moved
in different directions, so wherever you were in the audience,
you thought he.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
Was looking at you.
Speaker 6 (21:13):
In fact, Whitfield would say in his sermons, repent and
follow God right now, because what if you died on
your way home. So people were frozen by this and
had spiritual experiences right there. It was the immediacy of
Whitfield that was controversial. So somebody could have been preaching
(21:36):
in a church for twenty years with a kind of
ho home effect on people's spiritual lives, and here comes
this itinerate guy comes into the neighborhood, and suddenly half
the congregation are converted on the spot.
Speaker 2 (21:51):
People were changed. Ben Franklin liked what he saw in
the changes in people. He wrote in his autobiography about
how he would walk down the street and you would
hear in the various homes as he passed, people singing
psalms that they were worshiping God in their individual homes.
(22:12):
He recognized how people were treating one another better. There
was the fruit of repentance in people's lives, which indicates
that the spirit was moving.
Speaker 5 (22:21):
Whitfield preached up and down the colonies, all the way
up and down the seaboard. Whitfield became really the first
international celebrity in American history.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
The two of them became business partners, and on that
first trip to Philadelphia, they established a connection where Ben
could print some of the sermons of Whitfield, that he
could print the journals of George Whitfield. People were just
clamoring for all this printed material. It was Whitfield maniac
going on there, and Ben was ready to supply it
(22:53):
with printed material and make some money on it in
the process. Ben was an expert at public relations, at publicity.
George Whitfield was also pretty good at publicity, and so
together they were able to put the word out wherever
George was speaking. And he traveled then to the southern colonies.
He took a boat up to New England and traveled
(23:13):
through New England. He preached in every colony of the
thirteen American colonies at that time. He preached in everyone,
and there are estimates that half of the American colonists
heard George Whitfield speak in person. Now this is no
radio or TV at this point. This is all people
(23:33):
coming to a place where George Whitfield was speaking from
some kind of a platform. They heard his booming voice
speaking to them. Half of Americans state, and of course
the other half knew who he was. He was famous,
he was a star. There was not only a business partnership,
(23:54):
but a friendship that developed between Ben Franklin and George Whitfield.
They weren't best friends, but they were pretty good friends.
We have about a dozen letters that passed between them
over the next thirty years from that time until George
passed away in seventeen seventy. But not only did they
(24:14):
write to each other, they also wrote to friends and
relatives about each other. Ben's sister and brother were very
impressed that he knew the great George Whitfield, which is
interesting because he was Ben Franklin. But they were more
impressed with Whitfield than they were with their own brother.
I suppose that always happens. Of course, Ben was also
(24:35):
writing about Whitfield in his newspaper all the time and
putting out editorials and sort of pro and con There
was some controversy from time to time about George's ministry.
There were ups and downs in their friendship as well,
and there were times when they kind of went silent,
but then one or the other would write a letter.
And also George had a number of visits to a
(24:59):
ma America. There he'd come and spend two years traveling
through the colonies, and then go back to England for
a while, and later he'd have another visit. In those
letters that passed between them, George kept trying to convert Ben. Now,
Ben was brought up as a Puritan. He never totally
(25:20):
rejected that, but he sort of made up his own religion.
Even from his teenage years. He was making lists of
how to live a good life, what ethics somebody might require.
But he wasn't really a Christian. He respected the teachings
of Jesus, but this idea of giving your life to Jesus,
(25:40):
Ben wasn't so interested in that, And of course that
was all that George preached, and so he was preaching
to his friend Ben in these letters, saying, think about it, Ben,
apply your heart to what God wants for you. Open
your heart to God's call to you to have this
personal relationship.
Speaker 1 (25:59):
And listening to Randy Peterson tell the story of George
Whitfield and Ben Franklin and this unique collaboration, we hear
about Whitfield's absolute oratory prowess and how just brilliant he
is at moving the masses. Thousands and thousands would appear
and appear because Ben Franklin had been well promoting Whitfield's
(26:23):
arrival in the United States and what he was doing,
Whitfield was moving people with the Holy Spirit on the
spot to mass crowds, and they weren't used to this
in churches and delivering people on the spot, saving people.
And of course what Franklin was amazed at was the
change in the people in the neighborhoods he dwelt in
(26:46):
in Philadelphia and the area, and he liked what he saw.
He saw what repentance had done in people's lives. They'd
become better versions of themselves. And there it was Franklin
had helped, in some ways create this massive star who
had by many counts had spoken in nearly one in
two Americans on his tours across all thirteen colonies. Forget
(27:11):
about big concert tours, forget about big promoters. The very
first big concert tour and promoter, the Printer and the Preacher.
When we come back more of this remarkable story here
on our American Stories, and we continue with our American
(27:39):
stories and the story of the Printer and the Preacher.
Let's pick up where we last left off with author
Randy Peterson.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
When Franklin began doing science and being recognized for his
great scientific achievements with lightning. You remember the kite and
the string. Whitfield say him a congratulatory letter saying, Hi,
so you're becoming famous as a scientist. That's great, but
here's something that you should experiment with, look into the
new birth. And Ben stayed with the friendship. And that's
(28:15):
what I find amazing that he wasn't turned off by this.
He respected that George was doing what George always did.
There were times in that friendship when Ben stood up
for George and George stood up for Ben, and that
despite their religious differences, Ben had a great respect for
George's ministry, and there was a backlash against George's ministry,
and some were doubting whether there was really an orphanage
(28:37):
in Georgia, and George did everything he could to prove yet, yes,
it's there. But they were saying, oh, he's just lining
his own pockets with all the money he raises and whatever.
Ben wrote an important editorial in his newspaper that was
then picked up by other papers as well, that Georges
has integrity. There really is an orphanage there, and this
is all that George thinks about and works for. There
(29:01):
was a later point when Ben was in England speaking
to Parliament about the Stamp Act, that Americans hated to
pay taxes on paper goods, and while they did repeal
the Stamp Act, they actually passed other taxes on Americans,
and some of the Americans blamed Ben Franklin for that,
(29:23):
and there was a backlash against Ben at that time.
In the seventeen sixties, George wrote a letter and this
is a fascinating element of George's ministry too. He had
a letter network, a letter writing network where he could
write a letter to a friend in America who would
make a dozen copies and send them to a dozen
friends who would make another dozen copies and send to
(29:45):
other friends and other friends. It was social media in
the seventeen hundreds that George sent a letter to his
network that was passed through the American colonies, saying Ben
has served his country well. The end of Georgie's life,
it was seventeen sixty nine. He made his last visit,
his seventh voyage to America, which is quite important when
(30:11):
you think about it. Took two to three months to
cross the ocean each time, and so those round trips
you add him up, and that's like three years of
Georgie's life he spent on a ship going back and
forth to America. Anyway, he makes his last trip in
seventeen sixty nine, and he's still just in his fifties,
but he has worn down. He is asthmatic, he has fatigued.
(30:35):
He has kind of preached himself to death. Here that traveling,
riding a horse for an hour and getting off and preaching,
and then riding another hour and preaching again, preaching four
times a day sometimes it had caught up with him
and he was at the end of his ministry and
his life. And he was in New England at the
(30:55):
time and staying with a friend in Newburyport, Massachusetts, and
as the story goes, there was a group of people
outside the home pleading for Whitfield to speak to them,
some final words to them, some exhortation for them. And
so he did and went to a balcony and spoke
to that group, and those were the last public words
(31:18):
that he spoke. He went to bed that night, had
a fitful night, and the next afternoon passed away. There
was of course an outpouring of grief in America and England.
Charles Wesley wrote a beautiful eulogy. The young poet Phyllis
Wheatley wrote a poem that is still a classic of
early American literature in honor of George Whitfield.
Speaker 4 (31:41):
Phyllis Wheatley was the most famous African American poet male
or female in the eighteenth century, and she had actually
heard Whitfield preach, and it seems responded positively to his message.
She really embraced the message that you preached, and in
her poem you see these roots about the impartiality of
(32:07):
God's love for her people. And so his message was
transformative for her, not just on a personal level, but
actually connected deeply to her Phyllis. Wheatley is one of
those figures who links the Great Awakening message, the spiritual
message of new birth, to social transformation in things like
(32:28):
the abolition of slavery.
Speaker 2 (32:31):
And of course Ben Franklin put out a statement praising
the integrity of George Whitfield and his zeal for God.
One more story I want to tell, and it goes
back to seventeen fifty six, sort of the middle of
this friendship between George and Ben, the middle of George's
ministry in America. Ben writes a letter to George. Interesting
(32:55):
that this is Ben suggesting something to George, not George
pushing something on Ben. Ben says to George, wouldn't it
be great if you and I could start a colony
out by the Ohio River? And that was sort of
the wild West for them at that point, right, They
hadn't settled out further than that, so that in the
(33:17):
western reaches of the colonies. What if we started a colony.
Wouldn't it be great to combine the things that we
each do, your religion and my sense of industry. We
could create a colony that was both religious and industrious,
a community that worked together. And you think about Ben's
(33:40):
what Ben did, and he was always finding ways for
communities to work together. He started a lending library when
people couldn't afford books. He started a fire company when
they were worried about fires raging through the cities. He
started a town watch for security. He started all sorts
of ways for communities to band together, to work together
(34:01):
for the good of all. That's what Ben would bring
to that kind of colony. But of course he recognized
that George brought a spiritual element. George brought a connection
with God that was equally important in starting a new colony.
Now Ben probably wasn't actually suggesting that they would do this.
(34:23):
This wasn't a proposal. It was kind of amusing for him,
a wistful thinking, wouldn't it be great if we could
do that? And that particular colony never got started, except
maybe it did, and maybe it's called the United States
of America. Think about it that these two elements, the
(34:48):
spiritual element that George Whitfield brought and that sense of
a community working together for the good of all, both
of those things came together in the forming of the
United States. Just a few decades later. Of course, Ben
was involved in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution. He
(35:10):
was actually making those things happen in that time. But
there was a deep sense of spirituality that was in
America at that time, in large part thanks to the
ministry of George Whitfield, who had gone throughout all of
the colonies saying, you can't let a church do your
believing for you. It's up to you. You can't let
(35:34):
your faith rest in the church. You are trusting in
God who loves you. Open your heart to God. It's
up to you, not any other body, to do that
for you. Jesus said, truly, truly, I say to you,
unless one is born again, he cannot see the Kingdom
(35:57):
of God. It was that sense of personal responsibility that
George preached throughout the colonies and that people made part
of their own spiritual lives. It was a massive revival.
We call it the Great Awakening now and it really
changed America in a spiritual direction. So George Whitfield, Ben
(36:19):
Franklin together they form a combination that we still have
today of a society that works, but also a society
that trusts, that opens its heart to God.
Speaker 1 (36:37):
And a terrific job on the production, editing and storytelling
by our own Greg Hengler. And a special thanks to
author Randy Peterson his book The Printer and the Preacher
Ben Franklin. George Whitfield and the Surprising Friendship that invented America,
and what a story he told. And what I love
(36:59):
is that Whitfield was continually trying to convert his pal Ben,
and Ben took no offense. He knew that George was
being George and loved him for it. And Whitfield well
that interesting part of his life where he essentially had
created his own social media network through his letter writing.
(37:20):
But I can only tell you his letters must have
been remarkable. Why else would people copy ten twelve fourteen
copies and then send them off to their friends. But
he had a way of connecting with ordinary people about
spiritual life and being the life of being a Christian.
Seven voyages he took to the United States, and I'm
(37:41):
not talking flying across the pond, I mean sailing across
the pond two to three months for each trip. Three
years of his life spent on the ocean, and into
his fifties, worn down by all this travel, he had
preached himself, almost literally to death. The story of the
(38:03):
printer and the preacher here on our American stories.
This is Lee Habib, and this is our American stories,
the show where America is the star, and the American
people coming to you from the city where the West begins,
Fort Worth, Texas. They were the most famous men in America.
They came from separate countries, followed different philosophies, and led
dissimilar lives, but they were fast friends. No two people
(00:34):
did more to shape America in the mid seventeen hundreds.
Here to tell the story is Randy Peterson, author of
The Printer and the Preacher, Ben Franklin, George Whitfield, and
the surprising friendship that invented America. Let's take a listen.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Who would you say were the most famous people in
America in the seventeen forties and seventeen fifties. This is
a few decades before the Revolutionary War. So think back
in your history mind to who was famous at that point.
You might say George Washington, but he really wasn't around yet,
(01:15):
he wasn't in the public consciousness yet. You might say
Benjamin Franklin, and you would be kind of right about that.
But there was somebody else that seemed to be even
more of a sensation in that era. In America. It
was the British preacher George Whitfield. George Whitfield was born
(01:37):
in seventeen fourteen in England. His widowed mother ran an In.
George was a very smart kid. They thought he might
have a future in the ministry perhaps, which would be
a very respectable profession. He wouldn't have to apprentice in
a trade or something. So they wanted to send him
(01:59):
to school, so they sent him to what they called
a grammar school. It was preparatory for college. Eventually, George
did well there. He was goofing off sometimes, but he
especially loved theater. He had a theater teacher that just
was full of energy and taught him how to act,
how to speak, how to make gestures, how to capture
(02:23):
an audience, and George loved that. Now the end, his
mother ran came on hard times and so they didn't
have a lot of money and they thought they might
not be able to afford college. It turned out that
Oxford University had a program where certain poorer students could
get through college get their degree by being servants to
(02:47):
richer students, and so that was sort of demeaning. But
George became a servant to richer students, kind of a
butler there as the other students went to college. He
would shine their shoes and get them food and stuff.
But he also was able to attend classes and to
get his degree. I think this was important in George's
(03:09):
life because as brilliant as he was, he learned humility.
He learned to serve. At Oxford, George Whitfield met two
very important friends, John Wesley and Charles Wesley. John was
a bit older and he was sort of a teacher's
assistant there at the school. Charles was a classmate of George's.
(03:33):
They also had a group of people they called the
Holy Club. This was an interesting group because they were
all religious. They were church involved, but they wanted something deeper.
They wanted to get more serious about their faith, and
so they were methodical about their prayer life. They were
methodical about their Bible study. They were methodical about meeting
(03:57):
together for fellowship. They were methodical about doing good deeds
and going out into the community, visiting people in prison
and visiting sick people. They were methodical about their faith
so much that their detractors began calling them the Methodists.
And that's where we get that term now George Whitfield
(04:17):
wanted all of that too. He wanted to be a
methodical in his faith, and so he was a member
of the Holy Club. But here's an interesting thing that
as we look back in history, that all three of
those people, George Whitfield, John Wesley, and Charles Wesley, perhaps
some of the other members of the group, experienced a
(04:39):
later conversion. The method was not enough for them. It
wasn't enough to pray and read the Bible and go
to church and do all these religious things. Each of
them reported that God individually connected with them at a
heart level, at an emotional level, where they emotionally said
yes to what God wanted to do in in them.
(05:00):
It wasn't just a matter of doing religious things. It
was a matter of opening their hearts to God. And
so there's a famous conversion of John Wesley where he
says his heart was strangely warmed and that was his experience.
It was a heart thing. George Whitfield had a similar experience,
actually a couple of years earlier than John. He talked
(05:21):
about his abiding sense of the pardoning love of God,
that there was something emotional that grabbed him. This is
important because this became George's message in his preaching later on,
and it was also an important part of the Wesleys ministry.
We're not going to talk about them so much, but
(05:43):
George Whitfield, wherever he went, wherever he preached, he was
inviting people to get beyond religiosity, to get beyond just
church involvement, to get beyond all that and have a
personal experience of the Living God in their heart. George
Whitfield was ordained in seventeen thirty six, having graduated from Oxford.
(06:07):
He got his degree and he began to look around
for churches where he might preach. Wherever he got the
opportunity to preach, they loved him. He was really good
at this preaching thing. People appreciate it the way he
brought passion to his ministries. In that time, a lot
(06:28):
of the preaching in England and later in America was
pretty dry. It was very academic. It was about ideas.
Preachers read from manuscripts. In some cases they were trying
to be impressive with their are audition, with how much
they knew and to kind of showing off their great intelligence.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
And you've been listening to Randy Peterson. He's the author
of The Printer and the Preacher, Ben Franklin, George Whitfield,
and the surprising friendship that invented America. Right now, we're
learning about the preacher that seminar experience he had getting
into Oxford, not through his scholarship, but through well, sort
(07:12):
of a kind of indentured servitude. He had to serve
the wealthier kids. Whitfield learned humility from this experience. When
we come back, more of the story of the Printer
and the Preacher here on our American Stories, Leehabib Here,
as we approach our nation's two hundred and fiftieth anniversary,
(07:33):
I'd like to remind you that all the history stories
you hear on this show brought to you by the
great folks at Hillsdale College, and Hillsdale isn't just a
great school for your kids or grandkids to attend, but
for you as well. Go to Hillsdale dot edu to
find out about their terrific free online courses. Their series
on communism is one of the finest I've ever seen. Again,
(07:53):
go to Hillsdale dot edu and sign up for their
free and terrific online courses. And we continue with our
American Stories and with Randy Peterson and the story of
(08:15):
Ben Franklin and George Whitfield's remarkable and surprising friendship, one
that shaped American life and certainly mid seventeenth century America.
Let's pick up where we last left off here is
author Randy Peterson.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
George Whitfield challenged that just by the nature of his work,
it was not brilliant new ideas. It was the same
invitation that God has been offering since biblical times, that
you must be born again. That there was a commitment
he was calling people too, and he often did it
(08:55):
without notes. He used his dramatic gifts to make it interesting,
but it wasn't about exalting his own reputation. It was
about inviting people into a relationship with God. There's one
great story about the leading actor in London at the
time was a man named David Garrick, and he was
(09:16):
quoted as saying, Oh, I would give one hundred guineas
just to be able to say the word oh. Like
George Whitfield.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
The definition we used to get preaching in seminary is
that preaching is God's truth coming through personality. That's what
preaching is. It's God's truth coming through personality.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
And so he began to make a name for himself
in England in seventeen thirty six, seventeen thirty seven. In
seventeen thirty eight, he felt God's call to go to
America as a missionary to the colony of Georgia, which
was the most recent colony established. It was established for well,
(09:59):
for people who couldn't pay their bills in England. They
were thrown in debtors prison in England. But man named
Oglethorpe had the brilliant idea, let's start a colony in
America where these people can get a second chance, where
they can begin to build their lives anew and so
they did that. The problem was that Georgia was then
(10:21):
full of people who couldn't pay their bills, who didn't
have a sense of responsibility to the larger community. There
were some criminals in that group as well, and so
it was a rough and tumble society. John and Charles
Wesley had both been there in the previous years and
they had a terrible time. They did not have successful
ministries at all there. But George felt that maybe well
(10:43):
he felt God was calling him there, and so he
went there and in George's ministry. There, he listened, he
paid attention, He got a sense of what the people
wanted and needed. He learned to speak their language and
to have an effect on the people around him. And
one of the things he learned was that what they
really needed was an orphanage. In this rough and tumble society,
(11:07):
there were a lot of kids who were abandoned and
neglected and needed a safe place to grow up. And
so George determined to build an orphanage there and that
really became his passion for the rest of his life,
that he was raising money for this orphanage in Georgia.
He came back to America many times after that and preached,
(11:30):
and whenever he preached, he raised money not for his
own ministry, not to become rich himself, but to support
this orphanage, to create a place where kids could learn
and grow and learn about God. At the end of
that year in Georgia, George Whitfield returns to England and
he's there for maybe a year, but that's when his
(11:52):
ministry really takes off, and there are a number of
key developments in that time. Thing there were a number
of churches in England. This later happened in America too,
where churches they didn't like his new style. He was
a little too popular for them. They didn't like the
(12:13):
fact that people were flocking to hear him and leaving
their churches.
Speaker 4 (12:17):
On Whitfield's first preaching tour when he arrived, specifically in
Newbury in seventeen forty, when Whitfield came through the first time,
that he was welcome to preach in the pulpit. But
when Whitfield came back a second time, he wasn't allowed
to preach. But Whitfield was here for just a few
days and then he left and he was gone. And
so you have this whole network of all these itinerant
(12:39):
New Light ministers who are also preaching around different churches.
And then if people experience the New Birth, and then
they go back to their churches and they start to
want that similar type of preaching from their pastors, and
their ministers are not giving that type of preaching to them,
and not just that type of preaching, but that essential
message of what it means to be truly a Christian
(13:01):
and to experience that new birth through conversion. And so
these people are being kicked out of their congregations and
so in many ways. Yes, Whitfield has sort of stimulated
this new movement. But the real people who are carrying
this on and who found this church are a mix
of these local revival itinerant ministers and lay people.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
And so they closed their doors to him. He might say,
could I preach in your church? And they say no, no,
And so he, by necessity would find some outdoor place
to preach, sometimes in a field. Just set up a
platform in a field, and people would be able to
come from miles around and with their carts and horses,
(13:43):
and they'd just come and sit and listen to George Whitfield.
Speaker 5 (13:47):
There's some wonderful cows, like of a Connecticut farmer, and
he talked about how people had left the plow with
the animal in the middle of the field and they
would say, Whitfield is coming, Whitfield is coming, and they
went running. And then he went looking across the field
and saw this big cloud of dust, and he wondered
what it was, and he realized it was a dust
from all the horses and carts that were going down
the road to hear Whitfield preach.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
In that process, George Whitfield began preaching to the common
folk and not the upper class who came to church,
but people who sometimes were ignored by the churches, just
the common people, including coal miners. This was an important
industry in England at the time. This was their energy source.
But these coal miners were often just kind of too dirty,
(14:30):
too unchurched for the churches to care about. And yet
here was George Whitfield preaching this passionate message to the
coal miners, setting up shop outside of the coal mines,
and when the coal miners would get out of work,
they would come and listen to this amazing preacher preach
to them. There's an amazing story that George writes in
(14:50):
his journal about one particular coal miner that he spoke
to after a meeting, and he'll never forget that this
man's face was blackened with the coal dust. But this
man was moved to tears, and tears were streaming down
his face and making little rivulets in the cold dust
on his face, and so he had this streaky face
(15:12):
as he was responding to the invitation of God. Seventeen
thirty nine marks an important development in George's ministry. He
goes back to America and he's going to get to
the orphanage and check in on what's happening there. But
he starts in Philadelphia, the center geographically the center of
(15:34):
the Eastern Seaboard there it was also the largest city
in the colonies at the time. And so he goes
to Philly and he starts preaching there. Now in Philadelphia
is a man named Ben Franklin. He's got his own
story of how he got there. We're not going to
get into that. But Ben was established now as a
(15:54):
printer in Philadelphia and the publisher of the leading weekly
newspaper there.
Speaker 4 (16:00):
Jamin Franklin is reading stories in newspapers that he's getting
from London about this new upstart preacher, George Whitfield, and
he himself sees an opportunity to latch onto that and
to what Whitfield's doing, and so he before Whitfield arrives
in Philadelphia, before he ever gets there, Franklin has already
been publishing that he's coming and publishing in the Philadelphia
(16:21):
Gazette some of his sermons and some other things. So
people already know who Whitfield is.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
And you've been listening to author Randy Peterson, and his
book is The Printer and the Preacher Ben Franklin, George
Whitfield and the surprising friendship that invented America. And we
had just heard about that early meeting and how Franklin
was ahead of the curve, wanting to bring Whitfield to Philadelphia.
(16:48):
So he wrote about him, wrote about what was going
on in England and in London. And of course when
you're in the newspaper business, you want to attract eyeballs,
and Ben Franklin unders that. Moreover, what we learned here
about this preacher is his talent. One of the foremost
actors of his day, the Brad Pitt of his day.
David Garrick often commented that he wished he could just
(17:11):
speak and oh or just speak as beautifully, as brilliantly,
as passionately as Witfield did. So we went out into
the fields and met the ordinary people where they lived
in front of coal mines, out in fields, and of
course there was nothing anyone could do about God's spirit,
the Lord's spirit coming through. When we come back more
(17:34):
of this remarkable story here on our American stories. And
(18:08):
we've returned to our American stories and the story of
the printer and the Preacher.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
Let's pick up.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
Where we last left off with author Randy Peterson.
Speaker 4 (18:18):
So they're in this print culture where they're already hearing
about these mass preaching services that no one else has
ever experienced before in England at the time, and at
this time in Whitfield is about in his mid twenties,
and so he's young. And so here's this upstart young
celebrity coming too. Again, this is in America, this is
(18:40):
part of the British Empire, and so here's one of
our fellow British citizens who's coming. People are already primed
to receive his preaching.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
And so George begins preaching in central spots in Philadelphia.
The christ Church of Philadelphia had closed their doors to him,
and they were really afraid that there would be too
many people that it would ruin the church building. And
so he set up shop a block away second in
Market on the courthouse steps, and people thronged the streets
(19:11):
in front of him.
Speaker 5 (19:12):
When Whitfield was telling the story of Abraham about to
sacrifice this on Isaac, the audience has said they were
so caught up in his description and his gesticulation that
when he raised the hand like this or people said
they could see a knife in his hand, and they
were yelling, don't, Abraham, don't, because it was so vivid,
it was so powerful, and it had an electrifying effect
(19:36):
on the people who heard him.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
Ben Franklin had heard reports from England that George Whitfield
spoke in some field in England somewhere to twenty thousand people,
and Ben he had a skeptical mind. He was questioning
that could any human voice actually reach twenty thousand people.
So he decided to test it out scientifically. He was
(20:01):
Benjamin Franklin, after all, and so his scientific mind decided
to pace out the distance. He started at the courthouse
steps where George was preaching, and he started walking. He
walked a block away, and he could still hear George Whitfield.
He walked a little further, he could still hear George Whitfield.
He measured how far it was before he couldn't hear
(20:24):
George Whitfield anymore. He measured that out, and he did
the math on it, and he determined that thirty thousand
people could hear the voice of George Whitfield. That's how
powerful his voice was.
Speaker 6 (20:37):
Thousands and thousands of people went to hear him, and
of course they wrote, their friends and their relatives. So
when Whitfield went from one place to another, there was
a ready audience of thousands of people rushing him to
see him. Even Benjamin Franklin said, I went to hear
Whitfield determined not to be moved, and by the end
(20:57):
of his talk, I had empty my pockets, you know,
into the collection plate. Whitfield had two eyes that moved
in different directions, so wherever you were in the audience,
you thought he.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
Was looking at you.
Speaker 6 (21:13):
In fact, Whitfield would say in his sermons, repent and
follow God right now, because what if you died on
your way home. So people were frozen by this and
had spiritual experiences right there. It was the immediacy of
Whitfield that was controversial. So somebody could have been preaching
(21:36):
in a church for twenty years with a kind of
ho home effect on people's spiritual lives, and here comes
this itinerate guy comes into the neighborhood, and suddenly half
the congregation are converted on the spot.
Speaker 2 (21:51):
People were changed. Ben Franklin liked what he saw in
the changes in people. He wrote in his autobiography about
how he would walk down the street and you would
hear in the various homes as he passed, people singing
psalms that they were worshiping God in their individual homes.
(22:12):
He recognized how people were treating one another better. There
was the fruit of repentance in people's lives, which indicates
that the spirit was moving.
Speaker 5 (22:21):
Whitfield preached up and down the colonies, all the way
up and down the seaboard. Whitfield became really the first
international celebrity in American history.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
The two of them became business partners, and on that
first trip to Philadelphia, they established a connection where Ben
could print some of the sermons of Whitfield, that he
could print the journals of George Whitfield. People were just
clamoring for all this printed material. It was Whitfield maniac
going on there, and Ben was ready to supply it
(22:53):
with printed material and make some money on it in
the process. Ben was an expert at public relations, at publicity.
George Whitfield was also pretty good at publicity, and so
together they were able to put the word out wherever
George was speaking. And he traveled then to the southern colonies.
He took a boat up to New England and traveled
(23:13):
through New England. He preached in every colony of the
thirteen American colonies at that time. He preached in everyone,
and there are estimates that half of the American colonists
heard George Whitfield speak in person. Now this is no
radio or TV at this point. This is all people
(23:33):
coming to a place where George Whitfield was speaking from
some kind of a platform. They heard his booming voice
speaking to them. Half of Americans state, and of course
the other half knew who he was. He was famous,
he was a star. There was not only a business partnership,
(23:54):
but a friendship that developed between Ben Franklin and George Whitfield.
They weren't best friends, but they were pretty good friends.
We have about a dozen letters that passed between them
over the next thirty years from that time until George
passed away in seventeen seventy. But not only did they
(24:14):
write to each other, they also wrote to friends and
relatives about each other. Ben's sister and brother were very
impressed that he knew the great George Whitfield, which is
interesting because he was Ben Franklin. But they were more
impressed with Whitfield than they were with their own brother.
I suppose that always happens. Of course, Ben was also
(24:35):
writing about Whitfield in his newspaper all the time and
putting out editorials and sort of pro and con There
was some controversy from time to time about George's ministry.
There were ups and downs in their friendship as well,
and there were times when they kind of went silent,
but then one or the other would write a letter.
And also George had a number of visits to a
(24:59):
ma America. There he'd come and spend two years traveling
through the colonies, and then go back to England for
a while, and later he'd have another visit. In those
letters that passed between them, George kept trying to convert Ben. Now,
Ben was brought up as a Puritan. He never totally
(25:20):
rejected that, but he sort of made up his own religion.
Even from his teenage years. He was making lists of
how to live a good life, what ethics somebody might require.
But he wasn't really a Christian. He respected the teachings
of Jesus, but this idea of giving your life to Jesus,
(25:40):
Ben wasn't so interested in that, And of course that
was all that George preached, and so he was preaching
to his friend Ben in these letters, saying, think about it, Ben,
apply your heart to what God wants for you. Open
your heart to God's call to you to have this
personal relationship.
Speaker 1 (25:59):
And listening to Randy Peterson tell the story of George
Whitfield and Ben Franklin and this unique collaboration, we hear
about Whitfield's absolute oratory prowess and how just brilliant he
is at moving the masses. Thousands and thousands would appear
and appear because Ben Franklin had been well promoting Whitfield's
(26:23):
arrival in the United States and what he was doing,
Whitfield was moving people with the Holy Spirit on the
spot to mass crowds, and they weren't used to this
in churches and delivering people on the spot, saving people.
And of course what Franklin was amazed at was the
change in the people in the neighborhoods he dwelt in
(26:46):
in Philadelphia and the area, and he liked what he saw.
He saw what repentance had done in people's lives. They'd
become better versions of themselves. And there it was Franklin
had helped, in some ways create this massive star who
had by many counts had spoken in nearly one in
two Americans on his tours across all thirteen colonies. Forget
(27:11):
about big concert tours, forget about big promoters. The very
first big concert tour and promoter, the Printer and the Preacher.
When we come back more of this remarkable story here
on our American Stories, and we continue with our American
(27:39):
stories and the story of the Printer and the Preacher.
Let's pick up where we last left off with author
Randy Peterson.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
When Franklin began doing science and being recognized for his
great scientific achievements with lightning. You remember the kite and
the string. Whitfield say him a congratulatory letter saying, Hi,
so you're becoming famous as a scientist. That's great, but
here's something that you should experiment with, look into the
new birth. And Ben stayed with the friendship. And that's
(28:15):
what I find amazing that he wasn't turned off by this.
He respected that George was doing what George always did.
There were times in that friendship when Ben stood up
for George and George stood up for Ben, and that
despite their religious differences, Ben had a great respect for
George's ministry, and there was a backlash against George's ministry,
and some were doubting whether there was really an orphanage
(28:37):
in Georgia, and George did everything he could to prove yet, yes,
it's there. But they were saying, oh, he's just lining
his own pockets with all the money he raises and whatever.
Ben wrote an important editorial in his newspaper that was
then picked up by other papers as well, that Georges
has integrity. There really is an orphanage there, and this
is all that George thinks about and works for. There
(29:01):
was a later point when Ben was in England speaking
to Parliament about the Stamp Act, that Americans hated to
pay taxes on paper goods, and while they did repeal
the Stamp Act, they actually passed other taxes on Americans,
and some of the Americans blamed Ben Franklin for that,
(29:23):
and there was a backlash against Ben at that time.
In the seventeen sixties, George wrote a letter and this
is a fascinating element of George's ministry too. He had
a letter network, a letter writing network where he could
write a letter to a friend in America who would
make a dozen copies and send them to a dozen
friends who would make another dozen copies and send to
(29:45):
other friends and other friends. It was social media in
the seventeen hundreds that George sent a letter to his
network that was passed through the American colonies, saying Ben
has served his country well. The end of Georgie's life,
it was seventeen sixty nine. He made his last visit,
his seventh voyage to America, which is quite important when
(30:11):
you think about it. Took two to three months to
cross the ocean each time, and so those round trips
you add him up, and that's like three years of
Georgie's life he spent on a ship going back and
forth to America. Anyway, he makes his last trip in
seventeen sixty nine, and he's still just in his fifties,
but he has worn down. He is asthmatic, he has fatigued.
(30:35):
He has kind of preached himself to death. Here that traveling,
riding a horse for an hour and getting off and preaching,
and then riding another hour and preaching again, preaching four
times a day sometimes it had caught up with him
and he was at the end of his ministry and
his life. And he was in New England at the
(30:55):
time and staying with a friend in Newburyport, Massachusetts, and
as the story goes, there was a group of people
outside the home pleading for Whitfield to speak to them,
some final words to them, some exhortation for them. And
so he did and went to a balcony and spoke
to that group, and those were the last public words
(31:18):
that he spoke. He went to bed that night, had
a fitful night, and the next afternoon passed away. There
was of course an outpouring of grief in America and England.
Charles Wesley wrote a beautiful eulogy. The young poet Phyllis
Wheatley wrote a poem that is still a classic of
early American literature in honor of George Whitfield.
Speaker 4 (31:41):
Phyllis Wheatley was the most famous African American poet male
or female in the eighteenth century, and she had actually
heard Whitfield preach, and it seems responded positively to his message.
She really embraced the message that you preached, and in
her poem you see these roots about the impartiality of
(32:07):
God's love for her people. And so his message was
transformative for her, not just on a personal level, but
actually connected deeply to her Phyllis. Wheatley is one of
those figures who links the Great Awakening message, the spiritual
message of new birth, to social transformation in things like
(32:28):
the abolition of slavery.
Speaker 2 (32:31):
And of course Ben Franklin put out a statement praising
the integrity of George Whitfield and his zeal for God.
One more story I want to tell, and it goes
back to seventeen fifty six, sort of the middle of
this friendship between George and Ben, the middle of George's
ministry in America. Ben writes a letter to George. Interesting
(32:55):
that this is Ben suggesting something to George, not George
pushing something on Ben. Ben says to George, wouldn't it
be great if you and I could start a colony
out by the Ohio River? And that was sort of
the wild West for them at that point, right, They
hadn't settled out further than that, so that in the
(33:17):
western reaches of the colonies. What if we started a colony.
Wouldn't it be great to combine the things that we
each do, your religion and my sense of industry. We
could create a colony that was both religious and industrious,
a community that worked together. And you think about Ben's
(33:40):
what Ben did, and he was always finding ways for
communities to work together. He started a lending library when
people couldn't afford books. He started a fire company when
they were worried about fires raging through the cities. He
started a town watch for security. He started all sorts
of ways for communities to band together, to work together
(34:01):
for the good of all. That's what Ben would bring
to that kind of colony. But of course he recognized
that George brought a spiritual element. George brought a connection
with God that was equally important in starting a new colony.
Now Ben probably wasn't actually suggesting that they would do this.
(34:23):
This wasn't a proposal. It was kind of amusing for him,
a wistful thinking, wouldn't it be great if we could
do that? And that particular colony never got started, except
maybe it did, and maybe it's called the United States
of America. Think about it that these two elements, the
(34:48):
spiritual element that George Whitfield brought and that sense of
a community working together for the good of all, both
of those things came together in the forming of the
United States. Just a few decades later. Of course, Ben
was involved in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution. He
(35:10):
was actually making those things happen in that time. But
there was a deep sense of spirituality that was in
America at that time, in large part thanks to the
ministry of George Whitfield, who had gone throughout all of
the colonies saying, you can't let a church do your
believing for you. It's up to you. You can't let
(35:34):
your faith rest in the church. You are trusting in
God who loves you. Open your heart to God. It's
up to you, not any other body, to do that
for you. Jesus said, truly, truly, I say to you,
unless one is born again, he cannot see the Kingdom
(35:57):
of God. It was that sense of personal responsibility that
George preached throughout the colonies and that people made part
of their own spiritual lives. It was a massive revival.
We call it the Great Awakening now and it really
changed America in a spiritual direction. So George Whitfield, Ben
(36:19):
Franklin together they form a combination that we still have
today of a society that works, but also a society
that trusts, that opens its heart to God.
Speaker 1 (36:37):
And a terrific job on the production, editing and storytelling
by our own Greg Hengler. And a special thanks to
author Randy Peterson his book The Printer and the Preacher
Ben Franklin. George Whitfield and the Surprising Friendship that invented America,
and what a story he told. And what I love
(36:59):
is that Whitfield was continually trying to convert his pal Ben,
and Ben took no offense. He knew that George was
being George and loved him for it. And Whitfield well
that interesting part of his life where he essentially had
created his own social media network through his letter writing.
(37:20):
But I can only tell you his letters must have
been remarkable. Why else would people copy ten twelve fourteen
copies and then send them off to their friends. But
he had a way of connecting with ordinary people about
spiritual life and being the life of being a Christian.
Seven voyages he took to the United States, and I'm
(37:41):
not talking flying across the pond, I mean sailing across
the pond two to three months for each trip. Three
years of his life spent on the ocean, and into
his fifties, worn down by all this travel, he had
preached himself, almost literally to death. The story of the
(38:03):
printer and the preacher here on our American stories.
Host
Lee Habeeb
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