A Great Awakening

Landmark Film Captures Forgotten Story of Legacy of George Whitefield

The new film, The Great Awakening, captures a long-forgotten chapter of American history: the Rev. George Whitfield (Jonathan Blair), the British “enthusiast,” kicked out of the Church of England, who arrives in Savannah, Georgia, on May 7, 1738, with an aim to preach to the colonists.

The film’s narrator is none other than Benjamin Franklin (John Paul Sneed) in his later years as he reflects back over the life, work and ministry of Whitefield. Franklin’s semi-advisory relationship with Whitfield gives the film depth and honesty, and an openness to discussing matters with which one disagrees. The relationship between the two giants boils down to secular and sacred, God and mammon, rationalism and faith.

Franklin, upon seeing the crowds, immediately understands that his Pennsylvania Gazette will profit from printing the sermons of Whitefield. Whitfield also understands the power of Franklin’s printing press, and thus the two men strike a deal.

Woven throughout the film is the hardscrabble existence often overlooked in historical pieces such as AMC’s Turn or John Adams. Slaves, miners, and even the ordinary commoners working the docks or streets of Philadelphia appear downtrodden physically, emotionally, and spiritually. It’s shocking how hard life is depicted—even for those who know of Whitefield’s preaching to the miners—including small children, and women, mothers—in the coal mines. It’s heartbreaking, hopeless.

This sets the stage for Whitefield, whose fire-filled preaching stirs the souls of men, women, and children—of every social class and no social class at all—to follow Christ.

To understand Whitefield’s impact, one has to go beyond the film to understand that Whitefield’s ministry composed seven separate voyages to America between 1738 and 1770, and it is widely estimated that he preached at least 18,000 sermons over the course of his 34-year ministry. During his peak years, it was not uncommon for him to preach two or three times a day, seven days a week. His diary records an exhausting pace that eventually contributed to his physical decline and death at 55 years old in Newburyport, Massachusetts, on September 30, 1770.

While Franklin and Whitfield differed over religion, they agreed on one singular point—liberty without morality is no liberty at all. Franklin knew that encouraging "pathologies of the publick mind" (disorder, immorality, and obsession with self-interest) would destroy the republic.

Franklin believed that a republic requires a virtuous, moral citizenry to survive, famously warning that the new American government was, “A republic, if you can keep it.” The implication was that without public virtue and morality, the republic would collapse into despotism or corruption.

While Franklin never appears to have accepted the Orthodox Christian Faith, he does admit that Whitefield served as the spark that lit the light of liberty, ultimately ushering in the American Revolution. The film argues that true liberty begins with the individual’s direct, personal relationship with God, bypassing the need for state-sanctioned church hierarchies or aristocratic intermediaries. This is presented as a proto-revolutionary sentiment. By teaching that all souls are equal before God and that salvation is not a gift dispensed by a church or a crown, Whitefield and the revivalists effectively democratized the concept of authority: Our rights come from God, not the government. If one is subject only to God, the claims of earthly tyrants to absolute power over the conscience are revealed as illegitimate.

Perhaps the most famous story Franklin told about Whitefield comes from his own Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, wherein Franklin testifies to Whitefield’s power of persuasion. Franklin planned to attend a sermon with the express intent of keeping his money in his pocket, as he disapproved of the project Whitefield was funding (the Georgia orphanage). He wrote:

“I happened soon after to attend one of his sermons, in the course of which I perceived he intended to finish with a collection, and I silently resolved he should get nothing from me. I had in my pocket a handful of copper money, three or four silver dollars, and five pistoles in gold. As he proceeded I began to soften, and concluded to give the coppers. Another stroke of his oratory made me ashamed of that, and determined me to give the silver; and he finished so admirably, that I emptied my pocket wholly into the collector’s dish, gold and all.”

Go see this delightful film, take your family, children, and friends — and give thanks for the liberty we all have—and pray that we can keep it.