George Whitefield - Part 2

Although Rev. Whitefield stoked the fires of religion in Britain and America, his legacy was to undercut the authority of the established churches and to encourage religious diversity. When local Anglican authorities in the colonies opposed him, he defied their authority. While not deliberately encouraging the dissenters in their opposition to established authority, the ecumenical nature of his mission led him to preach in any pulpit offered and to speak wherever invited. The joy he extolled of personal religious experience conflicted with the grim inevitability of predetermination and contributed to the evolution of Christian theologies premised upon a loving God and the possibility of the sinner saved by repentance and faith, increasingly the message of dissenting sects.

Although militant in response to critics when young, Rev. Whitefield became less confrontational as he aged, but he remained the itinerant and was generally faithful to his original beliefs. He continued to travel to America and to preach to large crowds throughout the colonies, and he was on such a tour when he died in 1770 at Newburyport, Massachusetts. He had used the power of the press to spread the word of his mission, and the wide interest he attracted caused local newspapers to print the news of his travels and sermons. Thus, at a time in America when people's religious experience remained a matter of the local community and congregation, Rev. Whitefield's ministry provided an experience that tended to draw the members of the diverse colonial settlements into the awareness of a possible larger whole. Although Rev. Whitefield was a notable figure of his time, his career is only one thread in a large and diverse tapestry. Other events, occurring during the latter portion of his life – including the French and Indian War (the North American portion of the Seven Year's War (1756-1763)) and the collective action by the American colonies to oppose the imposition of the Stamp Tax (1765) – also reduced the insularity of the separate American colonies, which was among the influences that led eventually to the Revolution and American Independence.

People by their nature tend to favor and associate with those who resemble them in appearance, background and beliefs, and tolerance toward those who are different does not come easily. In the early years of the United States, however, the diversity of Protestant sects gave an incentive to all sects to prohibit any of them from using the power of government to promote itself. The prohibition against Congress making any law to establish a religion or to prevent the free exercise of any religion resides in the First Amendment to the Constitution. By the same token, those few states that had laws establishing a religion eventually repealed such laws.

This foothold of mutual toleration has grown over time – spreading from religious differences to other differences – although the growth has been slow and uneven. Writing in the late 1850s about the Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision and related matters of race, the academic Francis Lieber noted that "sympathy" is "the first basis of justice" and that such sympathy was lacking between the races. The pattern of American history from the revolutionary era, through 1860 and to this point in time reflects a growth in the mutual sympathy that the diverse people of this country are willing to express, through the law and otherwise, to one another.