EATING AWAY

Der Mensch ist, was er ißt – “Man is what he eats” - pronounced the sage German philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach, observing no doubt that an excess of Bratwurst and beer did his compatriots no favours when it came to bodily beauty, healthy exercise or coherent speech. I believe there is a wider context, that of the nation itself, which is defined by what it eats. In looking for the reason why people and nations behave as they do, I reckon we can discard the usual suspects – forget about Cherchez la Femme – and focus our attention instead on Cherchez la Légume!

An excess of Bratwurst and Beer?

   

Let us look at Scotland. A generally beautiful area on the wrong (i.e. North) side of Hadrian’s Wall, Scotland struggled to prosper compared to larger, well-populated England. Working the unyielding land was the fate of many and a strong rural strain is apparent in many Scots, most of whom are 3 generations from the kailyard. They like humble fare, even though surrounded by incomparable beef, fish and sea-food – scotch broth, lamb, haggis, oatcakes, barley, leeks etc., - winter warmers all!

Nourishing Scotch Broth

 

It is not altogether surprising that many frozen Scots have a pinched look, impervious to the world’s daily beauties but responsive to raucous merrymaking as a kind of Promethean safety-valve. We see this enigmatic aspect in performers like Billy Connolly, who takes native hardships to hilarious extremes, or in the pronouncements of humourless Nicola Sturgeon, Scottish first minister, who is oh-so deadly serious. She well represents the heavy oats-and-tatties (and, alas, deep-fried Mars bars) world-view of her Lumpen-SNP-constituents, overpowering the charming and competent professional class and the thrusting middle classes and peddling her peculiar brand of visceral Anglophobia at every opportunity.

Moving South to balmy England, we are in a diverse nation, within living memory one of the most powerful in the world. It has a rich and often triumphant history, a confident Establishment and an outward-looking attitude to the world. Its stereotype is the well-upholstered figure of John Bull, acute and genial, and its staple diet, toothsome roast beef and Yorkshire pudding.

John Bull

His favourite Roast Beef and Yorkshire Puddiong

  

The English are by no means saints and the industrial revolution took a heavy toll. There is much unspoken resentment of the gap between the haves and the have-nots; yet the tenor of the people is broadly tolerant, compromising and civilized. The favourite dishes of the English constitute a wide range, fish and chips, steak and kidney pie, Eccles cakes, pickled eggs and Eton mess (presumably loved by Boris!) – cholesterol-clogging butter and sugar much in evidence.

To digress, I believe there to be a mathematical correlation between the decline of the British Empire and the decline of Soup Drinking. The great soups of Scotland – Scotch Broth, Cock-a-leekie and my favourite Cullen Skink (based on smoked haddock) – and those of England – Oxtail, Ham and Pea and Mulligatawny once comforted millions of Brits but had to be made slowly, with tender loving care. I blame the suffragette / feminists who wanted to protect 1920s flappers from kitchen boredom and foolishly undermined a foundation liquid of the Empire, and fobbed us off with processed tinned rubbish and, oh horrors, with soup in hydrated packets!

The French are more enigmatic and difficult to analyse. Very distinct regional variations exist and the difference between the expansive, gourmandising denizen of the Midi and the thin-lipped, logical citizen of the Nord is very marked. De Gaulle, Macron and Barnier fall into the latter category, hostile to their neighbours, self-regarding and preening like peacocks in many estimations. To be sure, their food is superb but it is often eaten in grim solemnity – blanquette de veau, boeuf bourguignon, escargots, lobster thermidor, camembert cheese and the finest wines of Bordeaux and Burgundy, topped off by a frivolous soufflé. I always suspect a thin Frenchman (even Bonaparte had a cosy pot-belly) and would dine with Macron with a very long spoon indeed.

Blanquette de Veau a l'ancienne

                                       

Other nations are easier to categorise. The Germans consume huge quantities of tasty pork, enjoy sauerkraut and excellent beer but their cuisine is rather heavy and perhaps lacking in inspiration. Don’t we see the same qualities in their politicians? “Mutti” Merkel is a reassuring figure to Germans, homely and unfashionable, but surely she too is rather stolid and bland.

The Belgians delight us with their delicate cuisine, combining the quantity of Germany with the quality of France, wolfing down waffles, endives and mussels with chips. They also produce matchless chocolates but, alas, they host and embrace the European Union with a fervour that would mystify Hercule Poirot and which seems to many Brits as a tragically wrong choice.

Moules-Frites from Belgium

               

As ever in Europe, the US casts a long shadow. Endowed with every natural nutritional blessing, America has instead created the bulk of the fast foods we greedily consume – hot dogs, burgers, chlorinated chicken – dishes which do not detain the fastidious. They produce delicious beef, slow-cooked brisket and clam chowder to savour. Predictably Donald Trump is a fan of fast food, enjoying McDonalds, KFC, pizza and (OMG!) Mexican tacos while drinking Diet Coke through a straw – he is teetotal. Obesity is doing real damage to the US (and the UK too). Eating too much, going OTT, everything in excess, is a perilous national propensity.

America in Denial

The Western nations are a disparate group and it is not surprising they do not easily agree. Their food preferences tell us much about their characteristics. Add in some rogue element like paprika, Mexican jumping beans or English mustard and international exchanges will become even more spicy. Maybe we should revert to bland infants’ fare in the cause of peace!

SMD

21.08.19

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2019

THE ROAD TO SALVATION (3): THE MARXIST CATASTROPHE

Visiting the agreeably historic German city of Trier on the Moselle, one muses about the Romans who named this place the capital of Gaul, as one quaffs the delicious local wine. Much less agreeable is the thought that this is the birth-place of Karl Marx, a gadfly pain in the neck in the 19^th century while alive, and the posthumous inspiration of untold misery and human suffering in the 20^th.

Marx's Birthplace in Trier

Karl Marx in 1875

Karl Marx (1818 – 1883) was born into a once-observant Jewish family, while his father was a reasonably prosperous lawyer, who baptised his children in the Prussian Lutheran church and generously supported Karl. His son was academic, eventually reading law at Berlin University from 1836. Karl was attracted to philosophy and joined the Young Hegelians, a club propagating liberal ideas. The Prussian authorities were reactionary and imbued with the spirit of Metternich, viewing him with suspicion. Marx presented his doctoral thesis to the University of Jena, a more enlightened body than Berlin University and it was accepted. He became engaged in 1842 to an aristocratic lady, Jenny von Westphalen, whom he married 5 years later, and edited a socialist newspaper in Cologne, much harassed by the censors and by the police. He fled to Paris where he met his lifelong friend and collaborator Friedrich Engels in 1844 but soon had to move again to liberal Brussels.

Marx became an advocate of violent revolution and with Engels published The Communist Manifesto in 1848, a year of revolutionary turmoil throughout Europe. Marx and Engels argued that history is a record of class struggle between the private property-owning bourgeoisie who exploit the impoverished masses (the proletariat) mercilessly and that it is necessary to destroy the power of the bourgeoisie by confiscation to usher in a just society. Whatever its intrinsic merits, the Manifesto made stirring reading;

The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions.
Let the ruling classes tremble at a communist revolution.
The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.
Working Men of All Countries, Unite!

In 1848 Marx supported insurrectionary movements in France, Germany, Poland, Hungary and even Belgium but none was successful. Soon he retreated to more tranquil Britain, where Chartism was noisy but basically law-abiding, and received support from Engels, whose father had owned a substantial cotton thread business in Salford, by Manchester.

Friedrich Engels

Anarchist Mikhail Bakunin

Marx, London-based for the rest of his life, turned his attention to economics and was famously to be found in the Reading Room of the British Museum researching his seminal Das Kapital, the first of 3 volumes being published in 1867. The final two volumes were published posthumously, finished and edited from Marx’s notes, by Engels.

Marx analysed the rise and stages of capitalism, developed his notions of class struggle and broadened the theology of his creed with studies of the labour theory of value, exploitation and dialectical materialism. His work gave insights into social and industrial changes although later commentators, like Keynes, doubted if there was much relevance to later generations. Marx believed only well- established industrial working classes like those in England and Germany could precipitate a revolution and believed peasant Russia was too backward to play a part.

Marx remained a dedicated agitator. The First International of socialist working-class parties soon fragmented into rival factions but by 1872 there was a total split and the Marxists and the Anarchists went their separate ways. The Anarchists under the Russian Bakunin wanted an extra-parliamentary struggle which the Marxists thought premature. Bakunin was more disposed to immediate violence and castigated Marxists as authoritarian and no better than the existing bourgeoisie.

For the last 10 years of his life, Marx suffered ill-health, thought at the time to be caused by liver problems. He erupted in boils and carbuncles and a recent retro-diagnosis suggests he was afflicted by the skin disease hidradenitis suppurativa aggravated by poor diet and an unhealthy lifestyle including excessive alcohol and tobacco. He died in 1883 and is buried in Highgate Cemetery in North London. Engels lived on until 1895, dying of throat cancer, with his ashes being scattered from Beachy Head, Eastbourne.

This motley crew of hairy-faced agitators might have disappeared into the mists of history were it not for the convulsions of the Great War and the collapse of Tsarist Russia in 1917. The tiny Russian Communist Party, split between Menshevik and Bolshevik, battened on to the dire sufferings of the peasant masses. Led by a fanatical but effective agitator, Vladimir Lenin, the Bolsheviks seized power and withdrew their war-weary nation from the war. Accepting as gospel the analysis of Marx, Lenin dispossessed the middle classes and started a ruthless purge of the richer peasants, the kulaks, encouraging their local murder and persecution. Around 1 million died in the 1920s.

Lenin died in 1924 but much worse was to come. His colleague and arch-revolutionary Leon Trotsky had led the Bolsheviks to triumph in the bloody civil war, taking revenge on dissidents of any kind. Trotsky sought to spread the incubus of communism everywhere and welcomed the creation of the Comintern for this purpose. He was edged out of power by the sinister figure of Joseph Stalin, a devious Georgian, suspicious, pitiless and psychotic. Trotsky himself was to be assassinated by Stalin’s agent in Mexico in 1940.

Vladimir Lenin

Leon Trotsky

 

One of the many baleful aspects of Marxism is that, in talking of class warfare, the individual and his rights are ignored. It is simpler to drum up hatred against, say,” the intelligentsia” or “the rich” than against Mr. Petrov, the grocer, with a wife, 3 kids and an old mother to support. Dehumanisation was a technique employed by Marxist and Nazi alike; a slaughter of innocents was the result.

Lavrenti Beria and Josef Stalin, creators of Terror

Lenin had first sponsored Terror but Stalin was the master-terrorist, aided and abetted by his top secret policeman, twisted Lavrenti Beria. The peasants were cowed by forced collectivization, resulting in horrendous famine, notably in the fertile Ukraine. The whole exercise was an ideological Marxist absurdity, persisted in even when failure was obvious. Political dissidents were mercilessly purged with top Bolsheviks like Carl Radek and Bukharin queueing up to confess and be liquidated in the 1930’s show trials. Lesser figures were furiously denounced, insulted and executed in hordes by state prosecutor Vyshinsky. The Marxist logic of confession was chillingly explained in Arthur Koestler’s 1940 novel Darkness at Noon. Despite plenty of evidence of Terror, the Soviet Union was able to seduce large numbers of “useful idiots” to turn a blind eye to its hideous reality and to persist in expressing utopian ecstasy at its New World. Bernard Shaw, Sydney and Beatrice Webb headed this shameful rota from the UK but Ernest Hemingway from the USA and Jean-Paul Sartre from France were similarly gulled, a huge propaganda coup for Marxism.

I will not weary you with a full account of the Marxist rise, decline and fall. The success of Soviet armies in 1945 allowed communists cruelly to dominate Eastern Europe for a generation. China ominously fell to Mao-Tse-Tung in 1949. Stalin died in 1953 and Beria was summarily shot. Russian regimes led by Malenkov, Khrushchev, Brezhnev and Gorbachov became progressively less oppressive but their economic performance was feeble compared with the West. The market pricing method was anathema to Marxists, property remained “theft” and unaccountable bureaucrats tried to run a command economy – an impossibly complex procedure. The production of food and consumer goods were neglected to the anger of communist populations. Finally, the Soviet Union and her satellites collapsed in 1991 long after brave writers like Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Sinyavsky and Daniel had exposed to their own people the crimes and horrors of the Marxist state.

Between 60 and 100m people are estimated to have died under the oppression of the Marxist system between 1917 and 1991, a global catastrophe and a bitter waste of human talent. Their apologists like Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders are thankfully now on the precarious margins of political relevance where once their predecessors were contenders. As a Road to Salvation Marxism was a dead-end. We can say we have made our escape, but in truth it was “a damn close-run thing”.

SMD

16.08.19

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2019

ANIMAL PAINTING

I am not sure if it is a dog, a horse or even a cat that is supposed to be “a man’s best friend” but the special relationship between man and animal has long been celebrated. The caves of Lascaux depict admired buffalo, the Egyptians worshipped animal-faced gods, the Greek comic genius Aristophanes fantasised about rule by “The Birds” and the Roman Emperor Caligula made his horse consul. The pedants of the 17^th century ranked the painting of animate creatures only below the depiction of humans and above landscapes and still life; I will not join that debate but simply enjoy some of the images great artists of the past have bequeathed to us.

Exotic animals excited great public interest in Europe in the era of discovery and exploration. A famous image is Dürer’s Rhinoceros, which he created without actually seeing the formidable creature:

Woodcut of a "Rhinocerus" by Albrecht Durer (1515)

              

We must fast-forward to the 18^th century, a time of ease for the leisured classes, when pets could be indulged and animal sentiment expressed without embarrassment. Contact with animals was easily made in the farm-yards, parks and forests of great estates. The Dutch d’Hondecoeter family of painters specialized in familiar birds. Their works are well represented in British collections, including this one from Dyrham Park, near Bristol, displaying true virtuosity..

Cock and Turkey fighting, by Melchior d'Hondecoeter

           

Much more popular were domesticated animals and the French depicted young girls with their favourite cats as with this effort from Perrenneau (Kitty looks decidedly bad-tempered to me!):

Miss Bowles and her Dog by Joshua Reynolds

A Girl with a kitten by J-B Perrenneau (1745)

Pace cat-lovers but I rather prefer Reynolds, sentimental admittedly, but I am a big softie.

One of the great English masters was George Stubbs who flourished in the 18^th century. His horse-paintings are unmatched:

John Banham Day's dark bay horse by George Stubbs

By the end of that century Britain was at war with Napoleon’s France and there was some rivalry regarding the merits of Napoleon’s steed Marengo and Wellington’s sturdy Copenhagen. Both were splendid.

Wellington by Sir Thomas Lawrence

Napoleon crosses the Alps by J-L David

The 19^th century brought further riches. Franco-American J J Audubon published his seminal The Birds of America over 12 years from 1825. The wonderful bird paintings, displaying his mastery of ornithology, are a marvel even today.

Carolina Parrots by J J Audubon

In Britain the most eminent animal painter was Sir Edwin Landseer and his works were enormously popular. When Queen Victoria and Albert moved their summer residence to Balmoral on Deeside, high society followed them to newly fashionable Scotland. Landseer’s famous stag painting was copied everywhere:

The Monarch of the Glen by Sir Edwin Landseer

Landseer was many-sided, being a sculptor too, but he was also happy to feed the sentiments of his public with heroic images of rescuing dogs:

Saved! by Sir Edwin Landseer

In the 20^th century, paintings became almost unrecognizable but a few conservative artists carried on in their traditional fashion. One such was Sir Alfred Munnings, a friend of Winston Churchill, and his horse paintings are as good as any.

The Bramham Moor Foxhounds by Sir Alfred Munnings

SMD 

3.08.19 

 Text copyright Sidney Donald 2019

THE ROAD TO SALVATION (2) BILLY GRAHAM

My earlier piece about 18^th century George Whitefield told of revivals in Britain and British America and marvelled at the number of sermons preached, the distances travelled and the size of his audience. Billy Graham was a master of the communication techniques of our age and presided over 417 crusades in 185 countries and reached an estimated 210 million people. I recall the excitement, even in our decidedly unzealous household, of his visits (the first of several) to London in 1954 and 1955 and to Glasgow in the same year. Billy Graham was a tall, square-jawed American phenomenon and his name was on everyone’s lips, at least for a few weeks. The men felt challenged and the women swooned.

Billy Graham preaches

 

Billy Graham (1918 - 2018) died aged 99 after a spectacular career. His father was a modest dairy farmer in Charlotte, North Carolina, where he was brought up and educated. Indeed, he died in his house in Montreat, by Asheville, NC, cherishing his North Carolina roots all his long life.

Young Billy easily fitted in to the rural religious ambiance and in 1934, aged 16, was converted at a revival held by the Southern preacher Mordecai Ham – who was later disparaged as a racist and anti-Semite. He became an apprentice preacher, attending bible institutes, and was ordained into the Southern Baptist Convention in Florida in 1939. He practised his sermonising on the local birds and alligators! An attack of mumps exempted him from military service. Meanwhile his education was completed with a degree in anthropology from Wheaton College, Illinois, in 1943.

Billy moved from church to church and dabbled in popular radio evangelism. He had come to believe that the Bible contained the infallible word of God, and this coloured all his later utterances. He started his revivalist crusades in 1947 and one in Los Angeles in 1949 attracted much publicity and he became a national figure.

His social views were maturing. Early revivals in the South were racially segregated but by 1953 Billy Graham was refusing to speak at segregated gatherings and told his white audiences their former racial pride was mistaken and that all men were equal before God. He started to employ black clergy assistants gradually breaking down racial barriers. He was an influence for good on this issue.

Billy’s crusades really got into their swing in the 1950s. He targeted mainly US cities but also “saved souls” in England, Scotland, Germany, Scandinavia, Australasia and France. Later he concentrated on India, Africa and the Far East – indeed his largest audience was the 1.1m who attended a revival in Seoul, South Korea in 1973

.

Billy Graham crusade NYC 1957

The revivals were carefully staged. Typically, a sports arena with a high capacity would be hired. A choir of up to 5,000 voices would be recruited, creating a melodious atmosphere. Billy would deliver his vigorous Christian address begging those seeking redemption to “come forward” and declare their commitment. Those who came forwarded were interviewed by Billy’s staff and counselled, given some improving literature and a promise of follow-up. In Moscow, one-third of the audience “came forward” – mass emotion / hysteria? More songs and music would close proceedings. The revivals were ecumenical in spirit – no attempt was made to recruit “inquirers” to the Baptists, but they were directed to their local denomination. The wonders of acoustic science were employed to make sure everyone heard the message and local TV and radio stations were likely to cover the occasion “live”, greatly increasing the audience.

Billy Graham crusade in Los Angeles

Billy Graham kept this up for more than 40 years. He operated through a Billy Graham Evangelist Organisation with reams of propaganda, magazines and pictures streaming out to his public. Recordings of his sermons are still distributed. His public reputation increased and he hobnobbed with Presidents. Harry Truman met, but did not like Billy but Ike enjoyed Billy’s regular visits. The Catholic Kennedys kept aloof but Billy’s closest friend in the White House was Lyndon Johnson. LBJ’s rural Texas background was not unlike Billy’s and as LBJ wrestled with the problems of civil rights and Vietnam, Billy would kneel alongside him at his bedside and pray. Similarly, Richard Nixon appreciated the support of Billy in his difficulties (Billy did admonish Nixon for his bad language in the Watergate tapes) but they were reconciled. Later Presidents all honoured and respected Billy who became a kind of American Protestant Pope.

Worn out by his labours, Billy finally retired in 2005. Beset by hydrocephalus, making balance, vision and hearing difficult, his public appearances were rare. He died in 2018 and his coffin was presented to the mourning people in the Capitol building in Washington, a rare honour.

We will not see his likes again. The decline of religion and of Christian enthusiasm is very evident. TV audiences are fragmented and the days have passed for coverage of sermons even by a charismatic orator. Billy championed civil rights in the name of brotherly love and in doing so did much to civilize America – he fought a good fight.

SMD

30.07.2019

Text copyright ©Sidney Donald 2019

BORIS IS BACK!

On 3 September 1939 an excited signal was sent to the British Fleet by the Admiralty – “Winston is Back!” expressing its delight that a vigorous leader had returned to office. On 23 July 2019 a majority of our great country was animated by the news that dismal Theresa May was gone and that at last a buccaneer, a Brexiteer and a believer in the strength of our nation was at its helm. Glory, glory, hallelujah, Boris is Back!

Boris triumphs

 24 July was even better. The government was radically reconstructed. The dismal Jimmies were axed wholesale, the doubters discarded, the incompetents weeded out and a bright group of determined politicians now hold the great seals of office. Sajid Javid, Dominic Raab, Priti Patel and Michael Gove are a great improvement on David Lidington, Jeremy Hunt, Philip Hammond, David Gauke and all the others consigned to outer darkness. Did we dream that Lidington (who?) was actually deputy prime minister? Did we really endure a gloomily defeatist Chancellor like Hammond for 3 long years? Did Theresa May, with as much charisma as a cold rice pudding, really kiss hands and dare to represent our dynamic nation in the highest councils of the world? Whatever, that nightmare is over and a new chapter begins.

Compared to May’s glacial gang, Boris is a warm summer’s day. We have hope, we have vision and we have optimism. Boris is on the front foot and we can expect a cascade of government spending promises and subsidies in preparation for a no-deal Brexit and for the general election he will surely call before too long. I foresee a re-run of Lloyd George’s “Coupon Election” of 1919 when explicitly pro-government candidates received written endorsement and the gloomsters and fence-sitters received no recognition. Lloyd George won by a landslide, just as Boris will.

Certainly, the Parliamentary arithmetic looks very unfavourable at present. Maybe 30 Tories are disaffected and threaten to bring Boris down. But if the alternative is a Corbyn ministry of deep red hue, minds can easily change. A handful of Labour MPs may back a no-deal Brexit and LibDems are notoriously fickle. Scotland is probably solidly anti-Boris but all politicians like to be on the winning side and I doubt if a Dominic Grieve, an Ursula von der Leyen or a Diane Abbott set many voters’ hearts a-pounding!

Europe, with self-harming intransigence, is unwilling to have a dialogue with Boris’ government on any change to May’s useless Withdrawal Agreement. The Irish love their backstop – but will they sacrifice their economy for it? A no-deal Brexit will divert all our efforts to trade deals with the USA and the Commonwealth, which will do damage to the EU in the longer term. Personally, I would welcome such a change in focus.

Between now and Halloween, we will see highly exciting times – expect the unexpected, steel ourselves for alarms and excursions, for good and for bad news. Boris will do everything to raise our morale and our national determination.

Be of good cheer -we shall prevail!

SMD

28.07.19

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2019

THE ROAD TO SALVATION (1) GEORGE WHITEFIELD

It is characteristic of Mankind that he is always in search of a path to reconcile himself to the woes and hardships of existence and to find a way to live in harmony with his fellow humans. Some have followed the ancient teachers, like Socrates, Pythagoras or Epictetus, others are adherents of Islam, Buddhism or the Hindu cosmology, while the West fell under the sway of the sophisticated doctrines of Christianity for almost 2000 years. The 19^th century saw the growing influence of the Marxist ideology, balefully climaxing in the 20^th, while our own time has produced a number of eminent prophets with enthusiastic followings. My first piece on this subject will concentrate on the highly successful Christian evangelist George Whitefield.

George Whitefield

George Whitefield (or often spelled as it is pronounced “Whitfield”) was born in Gloucester in 1714 and died in Newburyport, Mass, in British America in 1770. He was the son of an innkeeper of uncertain financial stability, was schooled in Gloucester, where he showed acting talent, and went up to Pembroke College, Oxford in 1732 as a student “servitor”, studying, but also acting as a servant to richer undergraduates. Pembroke had briefly enjoyed the presence of the matchless Samuel Johnson in 1728. At Oxford Whitefield became friends with John and Charles Wesley and joined the Holy Club, a society devoted to the pious life, and when the Wesleys departed to a ministry in Savannah, Georgia, Whitefield succeeded John as leader of the Club. On graduation Whitefield decided to become an itinerant preacher and made his first of 7 visits to the American colonies in 1738. He briefly succeeded John Wesley as priest in Savannah and became convinced that his life-work should be raising the funds for an orphanage in nearby Bethesda. The orphanage was built and is the oldest extant charity in America.

Returning to England to raise money, he gave his first outdoor address to a large crowd of miners at Kingswood, by Bristol. He also had founded 2 churches in London but he gave these and the church at Kingswood to John Wesley to organize and develop in his “Methodist” fashion. Over the next years Whitefield travelled extensively in Britain and British America. Whitefield was of short build but he had a loudly resonant voice which could be heard at a great distance. Moreover, he was decidedly cross-eyed (thought by some to be a sign of divine favour!) and made a striking figure. He later befriended worldly Benjamin Franklin and Franklin calculated that Whitefield could be well heard by an assembly of 30,000 people in the open air.

His religious oratory had a strong emotional and theatrical impact: to borrow the phrases of H L Mencken on Woodrow Wilson, “He knew how to make them glow, and weep. He wasted no time on the heads of his (listeners), but aimed directly at their ears, diaphragms and hearts.” The eminent American theologian and writer, Jonathan Edwards, came to a Whitefield revival and wept along with the rest of the assembly and Whitefield himself. These displays of emotion were not considered dignified by the 18^th century Anglican church and Wesley himself had his reservations.

Whitefield preaching 1757

        

The early 1740s were a time of turmoil within the Protestant churches. In America it is known as The First Great Awakening and Whitefield and Edwards were leading lights. In Britain Wesley tried to keep his Methodists within the discipline of the Church of England but his insistence on ordination without the involvement of a bishop eventually led to a breach. Scotland, always a theological tinder-box, saw an extraordinary revivalist campaign centred on The Preaching Braes of Cambuslang and climaxed with energetic George Whitefield addressing 30,000 souls in 1742. Charismatic Wesley was building up an English Methodist sect which was challenging Anglicanism and its hold on all classes.

There were areas of theological controversy. Whitefield was a Calvinist and accepted predestination. Wesley was Arminian believing in free will and that men could be saved by God’s grace. The gulf is quite substantial but Whitefield and Wesley agreed to differ and became close colleagues in later years. It is their collective persistence that impresses and their defiance of many clerical enemies.

It is said that Whitefield gave 18,000 sermons to some 10 million people in Britain and British America, making him the very first transatlantic celebrity and one of the most well-known characters in the 18^th century. The Methodists remain the largest Protestant denomination in America and though they are in decline in Britain, they left a powerful legacy of piety, temperance and community-consciousness throughout the world.

SMD, 

26.07.2019,

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2019