was younger clergy who led the way in this rethinking of the Awakening. For them, Whitefield would have been a fixture on the theological landscape rather than the new phenomenon that he had been in 1739. Whitefield’s specific criticism of the Church of England’s ministry and theology had, moreover, blunted over time. It was possible for the younger clergy to adopt Whitefield’s doctrine of new birth and his advocacy of small group worship without accepting his earlier criticism of the liturgy and ministry.
In Philadelphia, it was William McClenachan (Macclenachan or Macclenaghan, ordained in 1755 and died in 1766 or 1767), a recently ordained Irish clergyman with evangelical leanings, that triggered interest in the Awakening. McClenachan arrived in Philadelphia in 1759 after a brief term as an SPG missionary in Massachusetts. While assisting Robert Jenney (1687–1762), the aging commissary and rector of Christ Church, McClenachan preached about conversion and established a religious society. When Jenney attempted to silence him, McClenachan and his supporters withdrew and began to meet at the state capitol. They formed the new congregation of St. Paul’s and by December 1761 had completed a building, which they claimed to be “the largest in this City or Province.”33
By 1763 Jacob Duché (1737–98), the young assistant rector at Christ Church, Philadelphia was speaking publicly in favor of Whitefield’s preaching. He then joined with a Lutheran minister, Carl Magnus Wrangel (1727–86), to organize a series of Bible study classes. The classes met from the fall of 1763 to the spring of 1764 in Duché’s home, that of his wife’s widowed mother Mary Hopkinson, and that of a warden of Christ Church. Duché and Wrangle called the group a “Colloquium Biblicus.” Hugh Neill (ca. 1725–81), a Church of England clergyman less sympathetic to Whitefield, referred to the same study groups as “private meetings according to the Whitfilian mode.”34
When Whitefield arrived in Philadelphia in the fall of 1763, even his old adversary Richard Peters, who had succeeded Jenney at Christ Church (linked from 1760 to 1836 with St. Peter’s as the United Parish), welcomed him. After consulting Duché and other clergy, Peters decided that it would be preferable to invite Whitefield to preach than to have “further disunion among the members, who might when displeased go over to” McClenachan. Whitefield accepted the invitation and preached on four occasions. Peters reflected afterward that his decision to extend the invitation had been a correct one. The evangelist preached, he felt, “with a greater moderation of sentiment” than he believed had been the case on earlier visits.35
Many younger clergy in other colonies shared a similar interest in Whitefield. Samuel Peters (1735–1826), who took charge of the Church of England congregation in Hebron, Connecticut, in 1758; Charles Inglis (1734–1816), who served Christ Church in Dover, Delaware, beginning in 1759; and Samuel Magaw (1740–1812), who succeeded him in 1767, all supported the Awakening to varying degrees.36
Interest in this spreading Awakening in the colonial Church of England was also evident in Virginia, where Whitefield had finally succeeded in lighting the fire of revival during his fifth visit to the colonies. By the 1760s William Douglas (ordained 1749, 1708–98), Archibald McRoberts (licensed to serve in Virginia in 1761), Devereux Jarratt (1733–1801), and Charles Clay (ordained 1768) actively supported the Awakening. They would soon be joined by Samuel Shield (ca. 1743–1803). Four others may have shared their sentiments, and three further clergy, including Robert McLaurine (ordained 1750, d. 1773), were willing to recommend evangelical candidates for ordination.37 Of the group in Virginia, Jarratt was to be the best known. Touched by the stirrings of awakening that began in the Presbyterian Church in Virginia during Whitefield’s fifth visit, Jarratt traveled to England for ordination in the Church of England in 1762. While there he heard both Whitefield and John Wesley preach. Returning to Virginia to serve as the rector of Bath Parish in Dinwiddie County, Jarratt began to call for personal conversion and to establish small religious societies in his parish and in neighboring areas.
In his parish William Douglas bridged the gulf between a pre-Awakening understanding of reception of the Eucharist as an owning of the covenant and Whitefield’s stress on New Birth by exhorting young people who had completed their study of the catechism and were preparing to receive the Eucharist. In his sermons to the future communicants he touched upon some of Whitefield’s favorite themes: a warning that the unconverted were “poor, blind, miserable & naked without God, without hope … upon the very brink of ruin,” a caution against “speaking peace to yourselves without foundation,” and a promise that “there would be joy in heaven, at your conversion to the divine Majesty.”38
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
