George Whitefield

Life and work

Whitefield was an Oxford contemporary of the Wesleys and part of their "Holy Club," experiencing his own conversion before either of them and preceding John Wesley into open-air preaching after finding himself barred from parish pulpits for his revivalist style.

Renowned for a booming, theatrical voice that could reportedly be heard by thousands outdoors without amplification (a claim later analyzed and given some scientific credence by acoustic historians), Whitefield preached an estimated 18,000 sermons across Britain and made seven preaching tours of the American colonies.

Whitefield's American tours, especially in 1740, helped fuse local revivals into the broader trans-colonial phenomenon historians call the First Great Awakening, working alongside figures like Jonathan Edwards and drawing crowds so large that Benjamin Franklin, a skeptical admirer, calculated the size of the crowds he could address.

Unlike John Wesley, Whitefield held to a Calvinist theology of predestined election, a difference that caused friction between the two, though they remained personally close; Whitefield also, controversially by later standards, supported and personally owned slaves in Georgia to help fund the orphanage he founded there.

Questions and debates

Whitefield owned enslaved people and lobbied for the legalization of slavery in the colony of Georgia to provide labor for his orphanage, a significant moral failure by later — and even some contemporary — standards.

In their own words

"I am content to wait till the Day of Judgment for the clearing up of my reputation."attributed

Further reading

• Encyclopedia Britannica: George Whitefield