The Divine Dramatist: George Whitefield and the Rise of Modern Evangelicalism

The Divine Dramatist is an excellent and compelling story on the life, works and personality of the pre-American Revolution evangelists George Whitefield. Whitefield, an egocentric genius in self-promotion was an heir to the break-away Protestant revolt of 16th century Europe and he brought with him the many religious biases and biblical distortions of his time. With no one authority and scripture only as his guide the legacy he left is 30,000 plus different Christian denominations all claiming the bible as their sole authority and guided by the Holy Spirit yet each disagreeing on what scripture says. Thus with such disagreement new denominations and non-denominations, as they label themselves, pop-up daily. One wonders, how can this happen if the Holy Spirit is their guide? I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the history and proliferation of bible believing churches. While Whitefield was not a money hording preacher per se, his business blue-print for successful religious marketing is the ground-floor for various Protestant preachers in selling their brand of bible Christianity and the development of mega-churches in America. Terance

"The Divine Dramatist" turns the life of a theologian into something not only readable, but fascinating. It turns out that Whitefield was the catalyst behind the most major movement in American history. It reads like a novel, but is very informative. Anyone interested in this subject matter must read it.

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.

What a great book! Stout is a wonderful historian and it shows