A Comparison of the Delivery, Style, and Description of Sermons Preached by George Whitefield and John Wesley

2012 ◽  
pp. 70-101
Author(s):  
Isabel Rivers

This chapter covers the publishing history of some of the main authors discussed in the book, the Congregationalists Isaac Watts, Philip Doddridge, and Elizabeth Rowe, the Methodists John Wesley and George Whitefield, and the Church of England evangelicals James Hervey, John Newton, and William Cowper; the publications of the major London dissenting booksellers, Edward and Charles Dilly, and Joseph Johnson; the printers and sellers for the smaller denominations, the Quakers and the Moravians; and some important provincial printers and sellers of religious books, Joshua Eddowes, Samuel Hazard, Thomas and Mary Luckman, Robert Spence, William Phorson, and John Fawcett.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben Geoffrey

An NLP based AI tool was developed for topic mining Christian writings of major figures from different Christian eras and movements. The text corpus chosen for text mining includes : the volumes of Augustine and John Chrysostom from the patristic period, the writings of Thomas Aquinas from the Scholastic period, the writings of John Calvin the reformer and the text corpus of sermons by George Whitefield and John Wesley that mark the beginning of the modern Christian evangelical movement and evangelicalism. The topics text mined and topics summarized include : Gospel, Salvation, Jesus Christ, Sin, Temptation, Tribulation, Pride, Lust, Envy, Joy, Hope, Charity, Marriage, Church, Heaven, Hell. They are downloadable from the link - https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1tG2Y36MF1ApvYnhPM_njtNvKYiv7_8RL?usp=sharing and this is expected to help Christian content developers. The link to the code of the NLP tool hosted in the GitHub repository is provided to aid further development - https://github.com/bengeof/AI-driven-Theology-Open-Development. These tools must not be viewed as threatening the role of the human in humanities research broadly and specifically in Christian theology but as empowering the human with additional powers of AI for research in the humanities in the age of Big Data.


2020 ◽  
pp. 140-172
Author(s):  
Baird Tipson

This chapter first describes the theology of the leaders of the evangelical awakening on the British Isles, George Whitefield and John Wesley. Both insisted that by preaching the “immediate” revelation of the Holy Spirit during what they called the “new birth,” they were recovering an essential element of primitive Christianity that had been forgotten over the centuries. Both had clear affinities with the conscience theology of William Perkins, yet both distanced themselves from it in important ways. In New England, Jonathan Edwards explored the nature of religious experience more deeply than either Wesley or Whitefield had done, and Edwards proudly claimed his Puritan heritage even as opponents found him deviating from it.


Author(s):  
William L. Davis

Chapter Three emphasizes Joseph Smith's exposure to Methodist sermon culture, within the context of exploring the preaching styles and oral performances of evangelical preachers in the Burned-Over District of Western New York. A close analysis of Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian preaching techniques illustrates the ubiquitous method of laying down heads and the practice of semi-extemporaneous sermon delivery. The chapter also addresses the extemporaneous preacher's method of preparation through the study of scriptures and other religious writings, as a way of "treasuring up the word of God" and building a mental storehouse of ideas for impromptu delivery. The chapter also explores the specific influence of Methodist sermon culture on Smith, who joined a local Methodist class and trained as a Methodist exhorter. Within this tradition, the influence of George Whitefield, John Wesley, and Adam Clarke are reviewed.


Author(s):  
Baird Tipson

Inward Baptism describes theological developments leading up to the great evangelical revivals in the mid-eighteenth century. It argues that Martin Luther’s insistence that a participant’s faith was essential to a sacrament’s efficacy would inevitably lead to the insistence on an immediate, perceptible communication from the Holy Spirit, which evangelicals continue to call the “new birth.” A description of “conversion” through the sacrament of penance in late-medieval Western Christianity leads to an exploration of Luther’s critique of that system, to the willingness of Reformed theologians to follow Luther’s logic, to an emphasis on “inward” rather than “outward” baptism, to William Perkins’s development of a conscience religion, to late-seventeenth-century efforts to understand religion chiefly as morality, and finally to the theological rationale for the new birth from George Whitefield, John Wesley, and Jonathan Edwards. If the average Christian around the year 1500 encountered God primarily through sacraments presided over by priests, an evangelical Christian around 1750 received God directly into his or her heart without the need for clerical mediation, and he or she would be conscious of God’s presence there.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document