Dictionary of Literary Biography on Alexander Garden
Alexander Garden, an opponent of religious enthusiasm, is known for his arguments with the charismatic instigator of the Great Awakening, George Whitefield. In his office as commissary of the Church of England, Garden represented the ecclesiastical authority of the bishop of London in the Carolinas and Georgia. His censure of Whitefield grew out of the Church's displeasure with its Methodist offspring and with the theologies and practices of the Great Awakening.
Born in Scotland about 1685, Alexander Garden was granted a master's degree and ordained in his land of birth. He came to Charleston in 1719, the same year South Carolina became a royal province. Soon after his arrival, he was elected to the rectorship of St. Philip's parish. The Anglican church in South Carolina had grown during the first two decades of the eighteenth century. Despite yellow fever and hurricanes, a war with the Yemassee Indians, and religious rebellion from Scotch-Irish dissenters, it flourished under the government of the royal province. After Garden was appointed commissary in 1726, church membership and missionary work in his jurisdiction continued to increase. Known for administrative leadership, Garden presided over annual visitations with his clergy with a firm and purposeful hand. Until the Great Awakening began, these annual visitations served to organize the clergy as a unified body of Christian priests and effectively to censure clerical misconduct. After attending one of these sessions in 1737, John Wesley commented approvingly on the "conversation on Christian Righteousness" pursued there.
George Whitefield's opinions of the Anglican clergy were not so approving. He criticized both their theology and their manner of preaching and he even went so far as to publish a letter "Asserting that Archbishop Tillotson knew no more of Christianity than Mahomet." In his journal Whitefield reported that when he visited Charleston in 1740, he "Waited on the Commissary," was first "met with a cool reception," and then with "a great rage" and a threat of suspension. After Whitefield retorted that he would respect a suspension from Alexander Garden as little as he would "a Pope's bull," Garden called him before an ecclesiastical court "to answer to certain articles or interrogatories, which were to be objected and ministered to him concerning the mere health of his soul, and the reformation and correction of his manners and excesses; and chiefly for omiting to use the form of prayer prescribed in the Common Book." Whitefield appeared before Garden's court but refused to recognize its authority.
Garden was incensed at Whitefield not only for scoffing at Anglican authority and clergy but for theological reasons as well. In Six letters to the Rev. Mr. George Whitefield (1740) he argued that Whitefield's identification of Christianity with faith but not good works was illogical, confusing, and dangerous. Garden understood salvation as a gradual process of justification, a growth toward purity and righteousness. He believed that good works were necessary to faith and progress toward salvation. He accused Whitefield of misrepresenting his Anglican doctrine with the "poisonous Insinuation" that Anglican clergy advocated good works as the "meritorious Cause" of salvation. To Garden this twisted representation of Anglican doctrine confused many people and was "destroying the Foundation" of Christianity. In his efforts to clarify the true doctrines of Christianity he attacked the Great Awakening's most eminent theologian, Jonathan Edwards--"poor shatter'd Dr. Edwards, as dogmatical, captious, unfair and confused a writer as any of his Time"--as well as George Whitefield and his "dirty Pamphlets."
Garden's sermons on regeneration depicted Whitefield as a theatrical, manipulative orator. He also objected to Whitefield's view that regeneration was "a sudden instantaneous Work" of the feelings. In Garden's mind, ascribing regeneration to the impulses divested people of responsibility for their beliefs and behavior and left them prey to charismatic demagogues with pretentious claims to Christian authority. Garden quoted Whitefield's statement "it has pleased God to give me a TRUE Knowledge of the Doctrines of Grace," and responded, "choice Armour indeed! Who shall be able to stand before you"" Garden's belief that it was wrong and dangerous to equate powerful impulses with Christian grace was confirmed by his interviews with members of the Dutartres family, who were convicted of murder and incest. The Dutartres, Garden wrote, "were confident they had the Spirit of God Speaking inwardly to their Souls."
Garden was also known for his views about slavery. In his sixth letter to Whitefield, he objected to Whitefield's statements that slaves in the Southern colonies were inhumanly treated and he defended the humanity of the majority of Southern slaveholders. With funds from the Society for Propagating the Gospel, the commissary bought two young slaves and prepared them as teachers for a school for slaves in Charleston. Although it stayed open until 1764, the school failed to meet Garden's expectations as a model for Christian schools for slaves in other parishes.
Garden resigned from the office of commissary in March 1749 and from the rectorship of St. Philip's in June 1754. He then traveled to England, expecting never to return, but his health would not tolerate the harsher climate. He returned to Charleston before the end of 1754 and died there on 27 September 1756. He was buried at St. Philip's in a vault built by the vestry in recognition of his service to the parish.
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