Rethinking Toleration: Wesley, Whitefield and Evangelical Collaboration in the Eighteenth Century

There is a growing body of scholarship on the history of religious toleration; nevertheless, historians have largely treated toleration as a matter of governmental policy and legal principle. This article broadens that account by examining John Wesley and George Whitefield's vision of evangelical unity across denominational lines. Articulated in a theological vocabulary of fellowship, catholicity and mutual burden‐bearing and oriented towards revival and evangelism, their vision extended beyond toleration understood merely as a legal or political arrangement. In this respect, I argue, it represented a distinctive model of pluralism that departed not only from older forms of latitudinarianism but also from the more radical anti‐establishment arguments for toleration advanced across the Atlantic. This article expands our understanding of religious pluralism and toleration in the eighteenth century to encompass toleration not only as a matter of government policy or legal principle but also as an ecclesiastical attitude and practice.