Stout, Harry S.-The Divine Dramatis

The Divine Dramatist, George Whitefield and the Rise of Modern Evangelicalism, by Harry S. Stout, an American historian of religion.
Commonly acknowledged as Anglo-America's most popular eighteenth-century preacher, George Whitefield commanded mass audiences across two continents through his personal charisma. Harry Stout draws on a number of sources, including the newspapers of Whitefield's day, to outline his subject's spectacular career as a public figure. Although Whitefield here emerges as very much a modern figure, given to shameless self-promotion and extravagant theatricality, Stout also shows that he was from first to last a Calvinist, earnest in his support of orthodox theological tenets and sincere in his concern for the spiritual welfare of the thousands to whom he preached.