WHITEFIELD, GEORGE
(27 December 1714, Gloucester, England-30 September 1770, Newburyport, MA). Education: B.A., Pembroke College, Oxford University, 1736. Career: Itinerant preacher in England and America.
At various times he was claimed as their own by Anglicans, Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, and Congregationalists. And at times with equal conviction he was denounced as a renegade and a fanatic. George Whitefield was America's first national evangelist, moving from region to region-Georgia to Maine-and from the pulpits of one denomination to another. The Anglicans could claim him because he was ordained one of them-although they must often have regretted it. But the New England Congregationalists had their own claim; they provided in a sense his adoptive denomination and home. He made seven preaching trips to America (1738, 1739-41, 1744-48, 1751-52, 1754- 55, 1763-65, 1769-70), provoked the greatest revival New England ever saw, and influenced Congregationalism's greatest controversy over points of doctrine. Whitefield even died in New England and was buried beneath a church in Newburyport.
At Oxford, George Whitefield had come to think of religion as a vital union with God. His "mentors" ranged from Thomas a Kempis to John Wesley, but the essence of his religious experience was a personal sense of "new birth" in 1735, following an illness. He came to think that such a conversion experience was the only way to God. After graduating from Oxford he preached widely in England, winning popular approval for his dramatic pulpit oratory. A great English actor said that Whitefield could make a profound impact with his articulation of a single word-"Mesopotamia." Both admiration and resentment came to Whitefield in England, just as they would later in America, and many pulpits were closed to the young preacher. Some ministers complained that the unruly throngs that gathered to hear him crowded out the regular parishioners or that he was a "spiritual pickpocket." taking collection money away from the parishes through his popularity with his audiences. Some accused him of being all heat and no light. So Whitefield began to preach in the fields after the manner of John Wesley. When he was only twenty-two years old crowds numbering in the thousands heard him preach, and his name was known throughout England.
Before George Whitefield arrived in New England in the fall of 1740, Benjamin Colman* and others had already broadcast the news of his successes in England and the southern colonies, which he had visited as early as 1738. Expectations were high, and Whitefield met them, preaching to tens of thousands of New Englanders. Lay men and women felt that they had heard the word of God for the first time, and ministers threw away their pulpit notes and attempted to preach extemporaneously, following the example of Whitefield. His impact was multiplied allover New England by other men, made revivalists by his influence. At first most Congregationalists approved of Whitefield's example, but as the "excesses" of the revival grew, opinions shifted. Some of the criticisms came from Whitefield's habit of judging the spiritual condition of other ministers and often finding them wanting. (He was impartial in his condemnations, having once remarked that Anglican Archbishop Tillotson knew no more of true Christianity than Mohammed.) Other problems involved fanatics like James Davenport*, who felt that the spirit of God justified such eccentricities as burning books in New Haven.
In the wake of Whitefield's first visit some Congregationalists split off into "separate" Churches. Others divided into "Old Lights" and "New Lights," debating the character of saving grace. From that debate came Charles Chauncy's* attacks on the revival and Jonathan Edwards's* defense-which grew ultimately into a recasting of traditional Puritanism into the New England Theology. George Whitefield, the unwitting cause of some of this turmoil, was less welcome on his second and subsequent visits to New England. He encountered similar problems in England, where he was even pelted with dirt and eggs sometimes while preaching. But he was still admired by many Congregationalists and found some pulpits open to him.
George Whitefield was traditional in doctrine, a strict Calvinist who opposed John Wesley's ideas on free grace. He once remarked, "Works carry a man to heaven! It were not more presumptuous than for a person to undertake to climb to the moon by a rope of sand!" In his efforts to bring the very spirit of God into the pulpit, Whitefield introduced a new kind of preaching to New England. In 1848 Jotham Sewall, a minister in Chesterville, Maine, recalled having heard Whitefield preach seventy-eight years before at York, Maine, two days before Whitefield's death. Sewall had been eleven at the time, but almost seven decades later he remembered that Whitefield "made an impression on my mind, which now, in my old age, is almost as vivid as ever. He stands alone among" all the men whom I have ever seen." Whitefield "spoke with some degree of hoarseness" that day, but his words "fell with wonderful power from his lips."
Sewall particularly remembered Whitefield's way of using an allegory to describe Christ's "gracious and powerful advocacy." Whitefield said, "In the time of the old Roman Republic, there was a man who had done worthily for his country, and in the wars in which he had served, he had lost both his hands, though the stumps of his arms still remained. He was greatly esteemed and beloved in the community in which he lived. A brother of his was under trial for some offence, before a court martial, and there was every prospect that he would be condemned. The unfortunate man being apprized of his brother's perilous condition, made his way into the court, stretched up the stumps of his arms, but said nothing. The court, aware of the relation he sustained to the man they were trying, almost immediately pronounced upon him a sentence of acquittal. So Christ has no need to say any thing in the court of Heaven-it is enough for him to lift up his wounded hands, and show his pierced side."
Sewall added, "The effect of this story, with the gesture and expression of countenance that accompanied it, was perfectly electrical: nothing that can be put on paper can convey even a remote idea of it." George Whitefield died two days later at the home of Jonathan Parsons, minister of Newburyport. The great evangelist provided the Congregationalists a lesson in pulpit oratory. The echoes of his example would be heard decades later in the second Great Awakening and later still in Congregational pulpits from New England to frontier California.
Bibliography
A: The Nature and Necessity of 0ur New Birth in Christ Jesus, in Order to Salvation (London, 1737); A Journal and A Continuation of the Reverend Mr. Whitefield's Journal, 7 vols. (London, 1739-43); A Short Account of God's Dealings with the Reverend Mr. George Whitefield from His Infancy to the Time of His Entering into Holy Orders (London, 1740); The Works of the Reverend George Whitefield, 6 vols. (London, 1771-72); Fifteen Sermons (Philadelphia, 1794); Eighteen Sermons (Newburyport, Mass., 1797).
B: AAP 5, 94-108; DAB 20, 124-29; DARB, 505-7; NCAB 5,384-85; NCE 14, 895-96; SH 12, 341-42; John Gillies, Memoirs of the Rev. George Whitefield (London, 1772; Hartford. 1853); Luke Tyerman, The Life of the Rev. George Whitefield, 2 vols. (New York, 1877); Edward Ninde, George Whitefield (New York, 1924); Stuart C. Henry, George Whitefield: Wayfaring Witness (Nashville, 1954); John Pollock, George Whitefield and the Great Awakening (Garden City, N.Y., 1972).
At various times he was claimed as their own by Anglicans, Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, and Congregationalists. And at times with equal conviction he was denounced as a renegade and a fanatic. George Whitefield was America's first national evangelist, moving from region to region-Georgia to Maine-and from the pulpits of one denomination to another. The Anglicans could claim him because he was ordained one of them-although they must often have regretted it. But the New England Congregationalists had their own claim; they provided in a sense his adoptive denomination and home. He made seven preaching trips to America (1738, 1739-41, 1744-48, 1751-52, 1754- 55, 1763-65, 1769-70), provoked the greatest revival New England ever saw, and influenced Congregationalism's greatest controversy over points of doctrine. Whitefield even died in New England and was buried beneath a church in Newburyport.
At Oxford, George Whitefield had come to think of religion as a vital union with God. His "mentors" ranged from Thomas a Kempis to John Wesley, but the essence of his religious experience was a personal sense of "new birth" in 1735, following an illness. He came to think that such a conversion experience was the only way to God. After graduating from Oxford he preached widely in England, winning popular approval for his dramatic pulpit oratory. A great English actor said that Whitefield could make a profound impact with his articulation of a single word-"Mesopotamia." Both admiration and resentment came to Whitefield in England, just as they would later in America, and many pulpits were closed to the young preacher. Some ministers complained that the unruly throngs that gathered to hear him crowded out the regular parishioners or that he was a "spiritual pickpocket." taking collection money away from the parishes through his popularity with his audiences. Some accused him of being all heat and no light. So Whitefield began to preach in the fields after the manner of John Wesley. When he was only twenty-two years old crowds numbering in the thousands heard him preach, and his name was known throughout England.
Before George Whitefield arrived in New England in the fall of 1740, Benjamin Colman* and others had already broadcast the news of his successes in England and the southern colonies, which he had visited as early as 1738. Expectations were high, and Whitefield met them, preaching to tens of thousands of New Englanders. Lay men and women felt that they had heard the word of God for the first time, and ministers threw away their pulpit notes and attempted to preach extemporaneously, following the example of Whitefield. His impact was multiplied allover New England by other men, made revivalists by his influence. At first most Congregationalists approved of Whitefield's example, but as the "excesses" of the revival grew, opinions shifted. Some of the criticisms came from Whitefield's habit of judging the spiritual condition of other ministers and often finding them wanting. (He was impartial in his condemnations, having once remarked that Anglican Archbishop Tillotson knew no more of true Christianity than Mohammed.) Other problems involved fanatics like James Davenport*, who felt that the spirit of God justified such eccentricities as burning books in New Haven.
In the wake of Whitefield's first visit some Congregationalists split off into "separate" Churches. Others divided into "Old Lights" and "New Lights," debating the character of saving grace. From that debate came Charles Chauncy's* attacks on the revival and Jonathan Edwards's* defense-which grew ultimately into a recasting of traditional Puritanism into the New England Theology. George Whitefield, the unwitting cause of some of this turmoil, was less welcome on his second and subsequent visits to New England. He encountered similar problems in England, where he was even pelted with dirt and eggs sometimes while preaching. But he was still admired by many Congregationalists and found some pulpits open to him.
George Whitefield was traditional in doctrine, a strict Calvinist who opposed John Wesley's ideas on free grace. He once remarked, "Works carry a man to heaven! It were not more presumptuous than for a person to undertake to climb to the moon by a rope of sand!" In his efforts to bring the very spirit of God into the pulpit, Whitefield introduced a new kind of preaching to New England. In 1848 Jotham Sewall, a minister in Chesterville, Maine, recalled having heard Whitefield preach seventy-eight years before at York, Maine, two days before Whitefield's death. Sewall had been eleven at the time, but almost seven decades later he remembered that Whitefield "made an impression on my mind, which now, in my old age, is almost as vivid as ever. He stands alone among" all the men whom I have ever seen." Whitefield "spoke with some degree of hoarseness" that day, but his words "fell with wonderful power from his lips."
Sewall particularly remembered Whitefield's way of using an allegory to describe Christ's "gracious and powerful advocacy." Whitefield said, "In the time of the old Roman Republic, there was a man who had done worthily for his country, and in the wars in which he had served, he had lost both his hands, though the stumps of his arms still remained. He was greatly esteemed and beloved in the community in which he lived. A brother of his was under trial for some offence, before a court martial, and there was every prospect that he would be condemned. The unfortunate man being apprized of his brother's perilous condition, made his way into the court, stretched up the stumps of his arms, but said nothing. The court, aware of the relation he sustained to the man they were trying, almost immediately pronounced upon him a sentence of acquittal. So Christ has no need to say any thing in the court of Heaven-it is enough for him to lift up his wounded hands, and show his pierced side."
Sewall added, "The effect of this story, with the gesture and expression of countenance that accompanied it, was perfectly electrical: nothing that can be put on paper can convey even a remote idea of it." George Whitefield died two days later at the home of Jonathan Parsons, minister of Newburyport. The great evangelist provided the Congregationalists a lesson in pulpit oratory. The echoes of his example would be heard decades later in the second Great Awakening and later still in Congregational pulpits from New England to frontier California.
Bibliography
A: The Nature and Necessity of 0ur New Birth in Christ Jesus, in Order to Salvation (London, 1737); A Journal and A Continuation of the Reverend Mr. Whitefield's Journal, 7 vols. (London, 1739-43); A Short Account of God's Dealings with the Reverend Mr. George Whitefield from His Infancy to the Time of His Entering into Holy Orders (London, 1740); The Works of the Reverend George Whitefield, 6 vols. (London, 1771-72); Fifteen Sermons (Philadelphia, 1794); Eighteen Sermons (Newburyport, Mass., 1797).
B: AAP 5, 94-108; DAB 20, 124-29; DARB, 505-7; NCAB 5,384-85; NCE 14, 895-96; SH 12, 341-42; John Gillies, Memoirs of the Rev. George Whitefield (London, 1772; Hartford. 1853); Luke Tyerman, The Life of the Rev. George Whitefield, 2 vols. (New York, 1877); Edward Ninde, George Whitefield (New York, 1924); Stuart C. Henry, George Whitefield: Wayfaring Witness (Nashville, 1954); John Pollock, George Whitefield and the Great Awakening (Garden City, N.Y., 1972).