James Delbourgoâ??s A Most Amazing Scene of Wonders: Electricity and Enlightenment in Early America offers a remarkable account of Ebenezer Kinnersley, a Baptist pastor who lost his Philadelphia church position due to his opposition to the Great Awakening. Kinnersley then improbably became the greatest popularizer of Ben Franklinâ??s discoveries in electricity.
Kinnersley was born in Gloucester, England, the same hometown as Franklinâ??s friend George Whitefield, the greatest evangelist of the eighteenth-century revivals. As a three-year-old, Kinnersley came with his family to Pennsylvania the same year, 1714, that Whitefield was born. His family was Baptist, and Kinnersley became an assistant at Philadelphiaâ??s First Baptist Church. Unlike the senior minister of the church, Kinnersley opposed the revivals because of the â??enthusiastic ravingsâ? of Whitefield and other itinerant preachers. He aired this opinion in Franklinâ??s newspaper, and it cost Kinnersley his job.
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