A History of the Episcopal Church (Third Revised Edition). Robert W. Prichard
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Clergy who were ordained in the 1770s exhibited an interest in the Awakening similar to the ordinands of the 1760s. In North Carolina, clergyman Charles Pettigrew (1744–1807) became an active proponent of the revival after his ordination in 1775. Pettigrew was a second-generation advocate of awakening; his own father had been converted by the preaching of Whitefield in Pennsylvania.39 Uzal Ogden (1744–1822), an SPG catechist (1770–72) and priest in Sussex and other points in New Jersey, and Sydenham Thorne of Delaware, both of whose ordained ministry began in 1774, shared a similar interest.40 Philadelphia clergyman William Stringer, who claimed ordination by an orthodox bishop but who was reordained in England in 1773, also was a clear supporter of the Awakening.41
There was strong lay leadership for the Awakening in the colonial Church of England as well. This came from two directions: from those colonists, like the parishioners of St. Paul’s, Philadelphia, who were touched by the progress of the Awakening in America, and from those recent immigrants who had been touched by the parallel evangelical revival in Britain.
Some of those in the latter category had been active in the methodist movement in England. By the 1760s, some who had experience as class leaders and lay preachers in the hierarchy that John Wesley had created to coordinate British religious societies were immigrating to America. Noticing the lack of any coherent structure to promote the Awakening in the colonial Church of England, they began to introduce the British pattern. Irish immigrant Robert Strawbridge founded methodist societies in Maryland and Pennsylvania beginning in the early 1760s. In the mid-1760s, Barbara Heck (1734–1804) convinced her cousin Philip Embury (1728–73), who had been a lay preacher before his immigration, to form a methodist class in New York. Heck and Embury found the Church of England in New York unconducive to their effort and began attending a Lutheran congregation.42 Others in New York apparently felt differently. In 1764, supporters of the Awakening were influential enough at Trinity Church, New York, for example, to pressure new rector Samuel Auchmuty (1722–77) to hire an assistant who was “a sound Whitfilian.” These lay supporters tried to convince Jacob Duché to leave his position as assistant at Christ Church, Philadelphia, and to come to New York. Duché declined the offer, but recommended Charles Inglis of Dover, who became Auchmuty’s assistant in 1765.43
By the late 1760s, many others had followed Strawbridge, Heck, and Embury’s lead in introducing methodist structures in America. French and Indian War veteran Captain Thomas Webb provided a colorful leadership style for New York methodists. Robert Williams, an Irish lay preacher and itinerant, arrived in Philadelphia in 1769. He traveled widely, appearing, for example, in 1772 or 1773 on Devereux Jarratt’s doorstep in Virginia.44 He and others cooperated with Jarratt, producing a flourishing methodist movement that soon became the largest in the colonies.
In 1769, John Wesley decided to play a more direct role in the expansion of this growing methodist movement in the American colonies. He began to choose lay preachers to send to America. He would eventually send ten, including Joseph Pilmore (or Pilmoor, 1739–1825), Francis Asbury (1745–1816), and Joseph Rankin. Pilmore, one of the first two chosen to go in 1769, settled in Philadelphia. Asbury, who on his arrival in 1771 was only twenty-six, would eventually emerge as the most influential leader of the methodist movement. In the short term, however, it was Rankin, an older and more experienced man who arrived in 1773, that provided leadership. In 1773 he summoned the first of what would become regular annual methodist conferences.45 Those who attended the first meeting adopted the published minutes of Wesley’s English conferences as their rule of order and vowed that they would admit no one to their number who did not agree to do the same.46
Wesley’s appointees were more supportive of the continued link between the methodist societies and the colonial Church of England than were some of the earlier immigrants who had introduced methodist structures on their own initiative. Wesley’s designates encouraged members of the methodist societies to worship in congregations of the Church of England, invited sympathetic Church of England clergy to sessions of annual conference, and tried to restrain preachers like Robert Strawbridge from celebrating the sacraments without episcopal ordination.47 This attitude won the cooperation of many of the Church of England clergy supportive of the Awakening.
The expanding methodist system also filled an important vacuum. Whitefield had provided a personality that linked awakened congregations in the colonies but no lasting structure or institution in the colonies that could endure after his own death in 1770. The methodist system, in contrast, provided a structure that was not dependent on one individual and could, therefore, provide continuity and direction over time. Not all who embraced the Awakening joined the methodist societies, however. Colonial clergy regarded the methodist societies as a lay movement that they should assist, rather than join. Lay supporters of Whitefield might have questions about membership as well, for, though Whitefield and the Wesleys agreed on the importance of new birth and the value of private meetings, they disagreed over the doctrine of predestination. Nonetheless, many did join and by 1775 the societies could boast of 3,148 members.48
The Great Awakening changed the theological character of the colonial Church of England. While advocates of awakening of the 1760s and 1770s never did abandon episcopal succession or the fixed liturgy in the way that Whitefield had been willing to do in 1739, they did adopt sentimentalist styles of preaching and Whitefield’s call for adult conversion. Even critics of the Awakening began to pay greater attention to personal religious experience. The attempt to integrate this new appreciation for affections with the received covenant tradition would, in turn, be a major topic of interest for theologians at the end of the century.
Changes were not only theological, however. Indeed, there were few aspects of church life that were left untouched. The membership, the institutions, and even the architecture and church music of the denomination were affected.
One way in which the Great Awakening changed the membership was by subtly raising the status of women. Female literacy was considerably lower than male literacy in the eighteenth century; by some estimates it was one-half that of men.49 The intellectual religion of the Moderate Enlightenment had, therefore, limited appeal to women. The Awakening, however, with its emphasis on affections and its household prayer meetings, provided new opportunities for female involvement. Martha Laurens Ramsay (1759–1811), the daughter of a prominent South Carolina family that attended St. Philip’s Church in Charleston, found, for example, that her awakened faith opened doors to a world with greater possibilities. She corresponded with such pious Englishwomen as Selina, Countess of Huntingdon (1707–91) and began a personal religious journal, which was published by her husband after her death.50
Similarly, the Awakening would affect the Church of England’s ministry to black Americans. The Church of England had begun to expand that ministry about the time of Whitefield’s tour of 1739–40, in large measure due to rapid increase in slave population.51 In 1741, the SPG purchased the slaves Harry and Andrew to serve as evangelists among blacks in South Carolina. In the mid-1740s, the clergy of Christ Church, Philadelphia, saw such an increase in their ministry among blacks that they asked the SPG to appoint a catechist to oversee the work. The SPG responded with the appointment of William Sturgeon (d. 1772) in 1747. Sturgeon, a Yale graduate who had traveled to England for ordination, carried on that work until 1762. In the early 1750s, Hugh Neill baptized 162 black persons in his Delaware congregation. Between 1758 and 1765, Dr. Bray’s Associates opened schools for blacks in Virginia, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and New York.52
The fact that the most effective work among blacks was often carried on in the same parishes in which Church of England clergy began to support the Awakening after 1759 may not be entirely coincidental.53 Clergy may have tested the simple message of personal reliance on Christ as a tool for evangelism for blacks before using the message with white parishioners. Whatever the facts of the matter, however, one