Nathan O. Hatch comments on the preaching of Whitefield and Wesley:

The enduring legacy of the first Great Awakening, Harry S. Stout suggests, was a new mode of persuasion. Defying a church callous to its common folk, John Wesley thundered that he would preach nothing but “plain truth for plain people.” While Wesley and George Whitefield were concerned about theology, their primary interest was that each person have a profound experience with God. This required an idiom in touch with people by the time of the American Revolution, the warmth of such evangelical appeals and their ability to draw the unchurched into cohesive fellowships made evangelicalism a major social force on both sides of the Atlantic.