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History Matters series – Race, Revivalism and the Making of a Religious Icon: Inventing George Whitefield

April 12, 2016 | 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm

Free

On a fall day in 1838, a cortege wound through the streets of Newburyport, Massachusetts, headed for Old South Presbyterian Church. A box contained the humerus bone of eighteenth-century English preacher George Whitefield, who had been previously interred in the basement crypt of the church following his death in September 1770. The reinterment ceremony restored the bone, which had been pilfered by a British admirer of Whitefield’s, to its former resting place.

This nineteenth-century memorialization was the latest in a long series of contentious and sometimes strange events involving Whitefield since he first set foot in New England in 1740, at the invitation of Benjamin Colman, Jonathan Edwards, and a small handful of Congregationalists with revivalist sympathies. The invitation of Whitefield was not without controversy among New England’s ministerial elite. While Whitefield’s sponsors hoped that his visit would renew a waning interest in religious life, his detractors worried that his visit would undermine the authority of clergy and upset the region’s fractious peace. Reactions to Whitefield varied, with members of the old Congregationalist guard, such as Charles Chauncy, lamenting Whitefield’s effect on religious life in the colonies.

This presentation will discuss what Whitefield’s arrival in New England meant for its religious culture, as well as how an itinerant Anglican preacher came to be buried in a Presbyterian Church. It will also discuss how Whitefield’s tomb because a site of pilgrimage for his followers.

Jessica Parr is a historian, specializing in the history of race and religion in the Early Modern Atlantic World. She received her PhD from the University of New Hampshire at Durham in 2012 and also holds an MA in History and and MS in Archives Management from Simmons College. Parr is a regular contributor to The Junto: a Group Blog on Early American History, and a co-editor at H-Net. Her first book, Inventing George Whitefield: Race, Revivalism, and the Making of a Religious Icon, was published by the University Press of Mississippi in 2015. Parr teaches at the University of New Hampshire at Manchester and Emmanuel College.

Details

Date:
April 12, 2016
Time:
12:00 pm - 1:30 pm
Cost:
Free
Event Categories:
,
Website:
http://congregationallibrary.org/events/hms-inventing-george-whitefield

Organizer

Congregational Library & Archives
Phone:
617-523-0470 ext. 230
Email:
jalbertsongrove@14beacon.org
Website:
www.congregationallibrary.org

Venue

Congregational Library & Archives
14 Beacon Street
Boston, MA 02108 United States
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Did You Know?

Certain books were “banned in Boston” at least as far back as 1651, when one William Pynchon wrote a book criticizing Puritanism.