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Benjamin Franklin became an enthusiastic supporter of one of America’s great evangelical ministers, George Whitefield,“the most popular of the Great Awakening’s roving preachers.” [2] Franklin did not subscribe to Whitefield’s theology, but he admired Whitefield for exhorting people to worship God through good works. Franklin printed Whitefield’s sermons on the front page of his Gazette, devoting 45 issues to Whitefield's activities. Franklin used the power of his press to spread Whitefield's fame by publishing all of Whitefield’s sermons and journals. Half of Franklin’s publications in 1739-1741 were of Whitefield, and helped promote the evangelical movement in America. Franklin was a lifelong friend and supporter of Whitefield, until his death in 1770. [3] The evangelical movement of the 1740s played a key role in the development of democratic concepts in the period of the American Revolution.[4] The Enlightenment period taught an ideal based on ancient Rome of republican government based on hierarchical social orders of king, aristocracy and commoners. It was widely believed by secular Enlightenment writers that English liberties relied on the balance of power divided between king, elite and commoners, and that social stability required hierarchal deference to the privileged class.[5] “Puritanism … and the epidemic of evangelism of the mid-eighteenth century, had created challenges to the traditional notions of social stratification” by preaching that the Bible taught all men are equal, that the true value of a man lies in his moral behavior, not his class, and that all men can be saved. [6] Franklin, who grew up a Puritan and became an enthusiastic supporter of the evangelical movement, rejected the salvation dogma, but embraced the radical notion of egalitarian democracy. The evangelical revivalists who were active mid-century, such as Franklin’s friend and preacher, George Whitefield, were the greatest advocates of religious freedom, “claiming liberty of conscience to be an ‘inalienable right of every rational creature.’”[7] Whitefield’s supporters in Philadelphia, including Franklin, erected “a large, new hall, that…could provide a pulpit to anyone of any belief.”[8] In Virginia, the existence of Baptist preachers challenged the established Anglican Church. Young Baptist preachers were arrested and tried in Fredericksburg before the Revolution. The issue of religious freedom was incorporated into the new constitution by James Madison, who as a young lawyer had defended some early Baptist preachers.
  
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