Selling My Religion: Shopping and the Preacher (2)

ANNETTE TELLS TALES How George Whitefield Sold His Religion. Pay Especially Close Attention if You're in Business.

Annette Laing

May 2, 2023

∙ Paid

Continued from:

Tales

Selling My Religion: Shopping and the Preacher (1)

Annette Laing

Apr 25

Selling My Religion: Shopping and the Preacher (1)

Shopping takes off in the 18th century! Born into that world of luxuries for sale is George Whitefield, innkeepers' and wine merchants' son and brother, who grows up in the family businesses, picking up tips about management, publicity, retailing, and transatlantic trade. He will go on to apply everything he learned to his life's true calling: Selling his own version of Christianity, in Britain and America. Watch as he becomes a transatlantic sensation, a TV preacher before TV, who makes his greatest impact in . . . print. That's what we'll talk about today, when I continue my riff on historian Frank Lambert's "Pedlar in Divinity”: George Whitefield and the Transatlantic Revivals (1994)

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How Long Is This Post? About 9,000 words, or 46 minutes. But if you loved part 1, you don’t mind! I’m counting on that!

Going Mainstream

Cartoon showing preacher holding up puppets of a devil and a witch to an ecstatic but dim audience — Credulity, Superstition, and Fanaticism, 1764 print by artist William Hogarth, whose career as a cartoonist and painter took off thanks to new opportunities to publish his popular work. Image: Public Domai…

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