The Divine Dramatist: George Whitefield and the Rise of Modern Evangelicalism (Library of Religious Biography) [Paperback]

Harry S. Stout (Author), Nathan O. Hatch (Editor), Mark A. Noll (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 1991 | Series: Library of Religious Biography

Commonly acknowledged as Anglo-America's most popular eighteenth-century preacher, George Whitefield commanded mass audiences across two continents through his personal charisma. Harry Stout draws on a number of sources, including the newspapers of Whitefield's day, to outline his subject's spectacular career as a public figure. Although Whitefield here emerges as very much a modern figures, given to shameless self-promotion and extravagant theatricality, Stout also shows that he was from first to last a Calvinist, earnest in his support of orthodox theological tenets and sincere in his concern for the spiritual welfare of the thousands to whom he preached.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Stout, a professor of American religious history at Yale and coeditor of Dictionary of Christianity in America , has produced the first comprehensive biography of Whitefield (1714-1770) in many years. According to the author, the Anglican Calvinist p. 252 clergyman was not only America's earliest popular hero but also the first to unite the colonies in a sense of common identity. With his single-minded emphasis on regeneration, he introduced into religion the personal, privatistic piety that is today characteristic of the evangelical movement. As the title suggests, the key to Whitefield's success on both sides of the Atlantic is to be found in his theatricality. He quickly recognized the power of open-air field preaching. He was a shameless, egotistical self-promoter who, in a startling parallel with modern televangelists, consciously (albeit sincerely) employed histrionics "with all the dramatic artifice of a huckster," a traveling salesman for the New Birth. By the end, according to Stout, there was no private person, only the public preacher. This book reflects exhaustive research and offers a solid portrait of a person of pivotal importance to present-day evangelicalism.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Paperback: 328 pages
• Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company (September 1, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802801544
• ISBN-13: 978-0802801548
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #452,331 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Arrogant, shameless egotistic self-promoter?!?, December 1, 2009

By 

BOB W. (Wheaton, Il USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Divine Dramatist: George Whitefield and the Rise of Modern Evangelicalism (Library of Religious Biography) (Paperback)

The Whitefield portrayed in The Divine Dramatist "lived his life almost exclusively for public performance" (xv). His principal motivation appears not to have been saintly piety, but unabashed egocentrism. Harry Stout's itinerant revivalist is an arrogant, shameless egotistic self-promoter (xxii, xxiii, 16, 36-37, 55, 109, 166, 223) who had mastered the art of ingratiation (11). He was an actor who "played the role of pious celebrity to perfection" (103) in order to "sculpt[ ] of himself a heroic figure" (53, 56). An inferiority complex (33, 36-37, 75) caused him to crave "respect and power" (46). Egocentrism serves as the framework from which Stout hangs his Whitefield. He preached because it supplied what neither missions nor charity could. It made "him an unrivaled somebody" (37). Whitfield went to Georgia because a pulpit in Gloucester "seemed too small" and the "much bigger stage" offered by the missions' field was "most tantalizing" (29). Once in Georgia "he realized that this small, struggling colony . . . was much too small a canvas on which to paint his life's work" (61). Whitfield therefore undertook responsibility for establishing an orphanage in Georgia because it "would require substantial travel" and could serve "as a pretext for itinerant preaching" (62, 64, 67-68). The egotistical, self-promoting actor-preacher that emerges from Stout's narrative never quite fully morphs into an eighteenth-century Elmer Gantry. While sharing the fictional charlatan's egocentrism, Stout's itinerant revivalist also experienced a genuine "conversion experience that, he passionately believed, was unmerited and of divine initiative," fervently desired "to activate his hearers to seek their salvation" and was "undistracted by the allure of sex or wealth" (xxiii, xxiv). Stout's portrayal is intriguing, but is it accurate? Unfortunately, as he does not fully unveil the basis for his psychoanalysis of this eighteenth-century super-star, it is difficult to ascertain the veracity of the entertaining portrait he provides.

42 of 64 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A mean spirited, tiresome rant., August 11, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Divine Dramatist: George Whitefield and the Rise of Modern Evangelicalism (Library of Religious Biography) (Paperback)

This volume came warmly recommended by Mark Noll in "The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind", but turns out to be not so much an autobiography as a mean spirited diatribe about how George Whitefield was a Bad Guy. Beyond the pedestrian failures of not adequately representing Whitefield's theology, this book fails to report his theology altogether. As I read, I thought time and again of those murky Sunday School classes where the Higher Critic of a teacher, having no life with God, labors to remove all the miraculous from the story of Moses and the Red Sea (although I continue to marvel at how God drowned the Egyptians in 18" of water). And I discovered from this book that George Whitefield was invariably insecure, self-adoring, tricky, a hypocrite, sneaky, effeminate, a cheat, self righteous, and well, you get the idea. One wonders if the author could use a little sermon on charity from his subject. But the greatest failure of this little book is its missing what invariable makes biographies of godly persons so readable: not so much the life of the person, but the life of God lived through the person. On this count, the book fails entirely. Save your money.

9 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Whitefield as Actor and Promoter, June 25, 2000

By 

Joshua D. Reitano (Cincinnati, OH USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Divine Dramatist: George Whitefield and the Rise of Modern Evangelicalism (Library of Religious Biography) (Paperback)

Harry Stout does a marvelous job with the difficult task of assessing George Whitefield's career with respect to his skills as a dramatist and promoter. Before reading this book I was very skeptical of the often undue emphasis historians in recent years have attempted to place on style rather than content to revivalists' preaching. But I found Stout's arguement to be very convincing. This is a very helpful volume for anyone interested in George Whitefield, the Great Awakening, or American religion.