Performance Art? Puritans in the Pulpit
F.Bremer and E.Rydell examine the tricks used by preachers in 17th-century England and America to hold their audiences.
It has become commonplace for critics to associate modern evangelical preaching with theatricality and artificiality, as in the literary depiction of Elmer Gantry by Sinclair Lewis and the recent pop hit 'Jesus He Knows Me' by the English rock group, Genesis. Critics often trace the development of these characteristics to the corruption of a pulpit style that originated in the Great Awakening, the religious revival of the 1730s and 1740s, when fiery and dramatic preaching performances first became popular.
Recently, the theatrical element of the era's evangelicalism was highlighted anew by Harry Stout's study of George Whitefield, The Divine Dramatist; in which he demonstrates that the revivalist's pulpit style was actually influenced by his contact with the eighteenth-century English theatre. Stout refers to Whitefield's sermons as 'dramatic scripts' and documents how he and his imitators would stomp, cavort, kneel, mimic, shout and break into tears during their sermons, using voice and gestures as tools to stir the emotions of their listeners.
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