Reviews of Books

New Light in the Garden of Good and Evil

Reviewed by Sharon Breslaw Sundue, Harvard University

Historians have long recognized and debated George Whitefield's impact on the religious history of early America. Few have discerned his significance for its educational history. The purpose underlying his initial journey to the British colonies and his famous preaching tours was, after all, the establishment in 1740 of an orphanage and school in the fledgling colony of Georgia—his "beloved Bethesda"—that would serve as both a model and a source of intense debate. In this volume, Edward Cashin tells the story of the Bethesda institution for the first time, comprehensively narrating more than two centuries in the life of the orphan home. Cashin addresses important questions regarding the institution, considering not just the numerous controversies surrounding the school and its evolving mission but also its significance in Georgia's early history and the reasons for its survival for more than two centuries. In doing so, he manages to be both thorough and accessible to the general reader.

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Cashin begins the story before Whitefield even stepped foot in America, with an account of the evangelical's relationship with John and Charles Wesley. Whitefield credited the founders of Methodism with the initial inspiration for the orphanage, part of a larger drive to save souls. That purpose was at once spur to the enterprise and source of its problems. Bethesda was beset from the start by conflict with Georgia's trustees. Moving beyond the familiar ground covered in Whitefield's published memoirs and drawing on the journal of Georgia trustee Lord Egmont, Cashin attributes the early contention to Whitefield's boldness in seeking final authority over orphans taken under his care. Cashin is careful to situate this conflict in the larger history of the colony. Despite a flurry of complaints regarding his assumption of ultimate legal authority over the orphans, which led one trustee to conclude that "he meant only to breed them up Methodist" (p. 26), Georgia trustees deferred action against Whitefield lest Parliament withdraw support from the infant colony amid the War of Jenkins' Ear. In the postwar period, Cashin argues persuasively, Whitefield and Bethesda's other administrators (most notably James Habersham) adopted a "policy of accommodation" (p. 57), and relations with Savannah residents improved, largely owing to Habersham's success in attracting to the city a share of Georgia's lucrative Indian trade and, no doubt also, to Whitefield's advocacy of an end to the restriction on slavery in the colony. In Cashin's estimation, the leadership exerted by these Bethesda affiliates was crucial in "ensuring the prosperity of Savannah" (p. 67).

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