First Freedom: The Fight for Religious Liberty Page #2

---

to quiet her

or drive her from the colony.

Mitchell:
The rampant prejudice

behind Anne hutchinson's trial

lasted throughout

the 17th century

in Massachusetts.

More than a half century

later in 1692,

over 150 people were arrested

in the infamous witch trials.

One woman was accused

of wearing pieces of lace.

Another was convicted

after testimony

from her daughter,

who was 4 years old.

It was primitive,

barbaric, and sad.

In the end, 20 people

were put to death.

Mitchell:
The puritans

established stable

and quite Democratic communities

in an untamed wilderness.

The flaw

in the puritan experiment

was the inability

to allow serious dissent,

but democracy in the 1600s

seldom extended to faith.

It would take a revolution.

Some 8 years after the puritans

came to Massachusetts,

the American dream began

to change shape.

The new world was now

a more secular beacon.

It was the place to look

for a better life.

Religion for many new

arrivals was secondary.

The church became

the stepchild of government,

not the master,

and clergymen themselves

came under popular fire.

Some seemed to be

in it for the money.

Many had run dry

of inspiration.

The services were not

all that interesting to people.

In many cases they were long,

they were oriented

towards doctrine,

often read from manuscript.

Whitefield changed all that.

He only had about

8 sermons, I think, you know,

and he went up and down

the seaboard,

but he was charismatic.

Bonomi:
He was a phenomenon.

He was sort of

the first great celebrity,

you might say.

Mitchell:
One day in 1740,

a fevered crowd

of tens of thousands

gathered before the steps

of the Philadelphia courthouse.

They'd come not in rebellion

but in ecstasy

to hear the passionate,

energetic,

and theatrical

George whitefield.

The son of an innkeeper,

whitefield had worked

his way through Oxford

as a servant.

By 1740, he was already

the most famous religious

figure of the day.

He toured America,

preaching nearly every day

to huge crowds.

Bonomi:
He preached

out in the open,

he didn't have to be

inside a church.

He preached in the fields.

He preached

in Philadelphia

in the center

of the street apparently.

Whitefield was a radical

in certain ways

in denouncing

conventional faith.

Holmes:
His message

was that God cared

even for the poor,

for the Indians,

for the blacks,

as well as for the wealthy.

Narrator at the end

of his sermons,

whitefield would boom out his

universal invitation,

"come poor, lost,

undone sinner,

come just as you are to Christ."

If religion didn't

cut deeply,

if it didn't move

people powerfully,

then it was no good,

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes