George Whitefield (; 27 December [O.S. 16 December] 1714 – 30 September 1770), was an English Anglican priest and Itinerant preacher who was one of the founders of Methodism and the evangelical movement.
Born in Gloucester, he matriculated at Pembroke College, Oxford in 1732. There, he joined the "Holy Club" and was introduced to John and Charles Wesley, with whom he would work closely in his later ministry. Unlike the Wesleys, he embraced Calvinism, and spearheaded the Calvinistic Methodist movement.
Whitefield was ordained after receiving his Bachelor of Arts degree. He immediately began preaching, but he did not settle as the minister of any Church of England parish; rather, he became an itinerant preacher and evangelist. In 1738, Whitefield traveled to British North America where he preached a series of Christian revivals that became part of the Great Awakening. During his ministry he would make a total of seven voyages to the colonies. His methods were sometimes controversial among various established clergy, and subsequently he engaged in numerous debates and disputes with other clergymen. He arrived in Philadelphia in 1739 where he met Benjamin Franklin who admired Whitefield's talent to inspire people and became a close friend and would later print Whitefield's sermons.
Whitefield received widespread recognition during his ministry; he preached at least 18,000 times to perhaps ten million listeners in the British Empire. Whitefield could enthrall large audiences through a potent combination of drama, religious eloquence, and patriotism.
Though Whitefield owned slaves, he was outspoken about the abuses of various plantation owners towards slaves. To this end he wrote, "A letter to the inhabitants...Concerning their Negros", which he had published by Benjamin Franklin, resulting in a great controversy between pro and anti slavery colonists. He also instituted a school to teach children of slaves how to read and write by means of introducing them to the Bible, while he also provided for the orphans of slaves in his orphanage.
He was born on 27 December [O.S. 16 December] 1714 at the Bell Inn, Southgate Street, Gloucester. Whitefield was the fifth son (seventh and last child) of Thomas Whitefield and Elizabeth Edwards, who kept an inn at Gloucester. His mother was the inn-keeper there, while George was employed as a menial servant. His father died when George was two years old, and he subsequently helped his mother with the inn. At an early age, he found that he had a passion and talent for acting in the theatre, a passion that he would carry on with the very theatrical re-enactments of Bible stories he told during his sermons. He was educated at The Crypt School in Gloucester and at Pembroke College, Oxford.
Because business at the inn had diminished, Whitefield did not have the means to pay for his tuition. He therefore came up to the University of Oxford as a servitor, the lowest rank of undergraduates. Granted free tuition, he acted as a servant to fellows and fellow-commoners; duties including teaching them in the morning, helping them bathe, cleaning their rooms, carrying their books, and assisting them with work. Whitefield would later confess that though he did good works and tried to obey the law of God, he was not yet truly converted to Christ. Charles Wesley encouraged him to read Henry Scougal's book The Life of God in the Soul of Man that Whitefield says opened his eyes to the Gospel and led to his conversion. It was that book, he said, that God used to show him that he was still lost despite all his attempts to gain the favor of God by means of good works. Only by God's grace can a person realize they have offended God and realize also their need for Jesus Christ, God's Son, and His righteousness imputed to them by faith. Scougal's book showed him the need for a man to be born of God from above, and that this is a supernatural work of the Holy Spirit creating a new heart and a new nature within that wants to serve God, not in order to be saved, but because one has been already graciously and undeservedly saved. In 1736, after Whitefield's conversion, the Bishop of Gloucester, Martin Benson, ordained him a deacon of the Church of England on June 20, 1736
Whitefield preached his first sermon at St Mary de Crypt Church in his home town of Gloucester, a week after his ordination as deacon. The Church of England did not assign him a church, so he began preaching in parks and fields in England on his own, reaching out to people who normally did not attend church.
In 1738 he went to Christ Church in Savannah, Province of Georgia, in the American colonies which had been founded by John Wesley. While there Whitefield decided that one of the greatest needs of the area was an orphan house. He decided this would be his life's work. In 1739 he returned to England to raise funds, as well as to receive priest's orders. While preparing for his return, he preached to large congregations. At the suggestion of friends he preached to the miners of Kingswood, outside Bristol, in the open air. Because he was returning to Georgia he invited John Wesley to take over his Bristol congregations and to preach in the open air for the first time at Kingswood and then at Blackheath, London.
Whitefield, like many other 18th-century Anglican evangelicals such as Augustus Toplady, John Newton, and William Romaine, accepted a plain reading of Article 17—the Church of England's doctrine of predestination—and disagreed with the Wesley brothers' Arminian views on the doctrine of the atonement. However, Whitefield finally did what his friends hoped he would not do—hand over the entire ministry to John Wesley. Whitefield formed and was the president of the first Methodist conference, but he soon relinquished the position to concentrate on evangelistic work.
Three churches were established in England in his name—one in Penn Street, Bristol, and two in London, in Moorfields and in Tottenham Court Road—all three of which became known by the name of "Whitefield's Tabernacle". The society meeting at the second Kingswood School at Kingswood was eventually also named Whitefield's Tabernacle. Whitefield acted as chaplain to Selina, Countess of Huntingdon, and some of his followers joined the Countess of Huntingdon's Connexion, whose chapels were built by Selina, where a form of Calvinistic Methodism similar to Whitefield's was taught. Many of Selina's chapels were built in the English and Welsh counties, and one, Spa Fields Chapel, was erected in London.
After arriving in Georgia in 1738, Whitefield visited the Lutheran-founded Ebenezer institution and soon recognized the need to establish an orphanage. Whitefield's endeavour to build a Protestant orphanage in Georgia was central to his Methodist preaching. The Bethesda Orphanage and his preaching comprised the "two-fold task" that occupied the rest of his life. Construction for the orphanage began on March 25, 1740 in land spanning 500 acres. Whitefield called the orphanage “Bethesda” which means “House of Mercy” because he wanted it to be a place of strong Gospel influence, a wholesome atmosphere, and strong discipline. Having raised the money by his preaching, Whitefield "insisted on sole control of the orphanage." Bethesda eventually grew to become the best known orphanage in the British colonies.
Whitefield’s management of Bethesda was not without criticism. He refused to give the trustees a financial accounting. The trustees also objected to Whitefield's using "a wrong method" to control the children, who "are often kept praying and crying all the night". Other historical sources also point to objections over Whitefield’s use of the orphanage to improperly remove orphaned youth from families and friends who could support them.
In 1740 he engaged Moravian Brethren from Georgia to build another orphanage for negro children on land he had bought in the Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania. Following a theological disagreement, he dismissed them and was unable to complete the building, which the Moravians subsequently bought and completed. This now is the Whitefield House in the center of the Moravian borough of Nazareth, Pennsylvania.