In A Great Awakening, a film based on real events, Benjamin Franklin tells his grandson Benny the story of his friend George Whitefield, the famous traveling evangelist of the Great Awakening in America. Using Franklin’s own terms for describing headlines in his newspaper, Benny asks his grandfather, “George Whitefield – was he soothe or stoke? To which Franklin did not choose, but rather, with a smile of remembrance, replied, “Yes.” Indeed, Whitefield could either soothe or stoke the heart of the listener.
Franklin proceeds to tell, and the film shows, how Whitefield began as a poor, aspiring English actor who had no faith but ended up at Oxford, where he was befriended by John and Charles Wesley (and others from Oxford’s Holy Club) and was converted. The film shows Whitefield struggling soon after his conversion, overzealous in his deeds and in his fasting. His Holy Club friends remind him that God was “well-pleased” with Jesus not because of His works, but at His baptism. It is then that George is obedient in baptism and becomes full of the Spirit.
Earlier in the story, while George is still a thespian, there is a scene where Whitefield’s acting coach and mentor reminds him of the importance of projecting loudly and clearly. “Remember the source of your power. When the time comes, let them have it!” That time will come, though not as an actor on stage but as a preacher on fire.
Whitefield becomes a minister in the Church of England, and there is a memorable scene where he is about to step up to the pulpit as a guest preacher in a stuffy church. One of the priests whispers to George, “I’m very sorry to see you here, Mr. Whitefield,” whose reply was, “So is the devil.” The young preacher begins his sermon by crumpling his manuscript and giving an anecdote at the expense of the old preachers. It is then that he lets them have it, so to speak. Declaring loudly, “I will not be a velvet-mouthed preacher,” Whitefield pounds the pulpit, removes his wig, and cries out, “Do not be deceived! You may have a religious head and yet have the devil in your heart!” Then, drawing comparisons between Nicodemus, the church at Sardis, and the stale church he was preaching in, he echoes Jesus: “You must be born again!” As Franklin tells his grandson, “The Church of England was not ready for an awakened George Whitefield.” Indeed, the church bans Whitefield from preaching, so he takes off, traveling on horseback and eventually by ship to America, preaching with passion to everyone, regardless of parish.
When Whitefield arrives in Philadelphia in 1739 and is about to step out onto the courthouse balcony to preach to the excited thousands below, who have heard of the preacher’s acclaim, he prays, “Father, tear down the name of Whitefield if it means that your name remains.” He then launches into a sermon on the freedom, wisdom, and mystery found in Christ. While the crowd is taken by his every word, Franklin – ever the scientist – is shuffling around, trying to compute the exact range and reach of Whitefield’s powerful voice. Franklin is more interested in how many people can hear the preacher than he is in actually hearing the Word himself, even as Whitefield declares, “The fear of Him is the beginning of knowledge.”
A Great Awakening shows us the spiritual awakening of the American colonies prior to their political awakening and the Revolution. It takes us inside the real-life friendship of a preacher and a printer, a man of faith and a man of reason. And while it doesn’t show us a conversion of the deist Franklin (despite Whitefield’s influence and personal urgings), the film, which is bookended by the events of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, ends with Franklin’s famous “Address on Prayer” – a plea for the delegates to bring back the practice of daily prayer in the assembly, arguing from scripture that “unless the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it.” After his speech, Franklin sits and remembers Whitefield’s words: “My friends, do you want to be free? Liberty is found in Him alone! Do you want to live? He alone gives eternal life! I beseech you, do not reject so great a gift. A great awakening has come. Arise, O sleeper. Awaken!” ~ LK
