10 Things You Should Know About George Whitefield

This article is part of the 10 Things You Should Know series.

1. Whitefield consistently proclaimed the necessity of the new birth.

When George Whitefield entered Pembroke College at Oxford University in 1732, he was soon attracted to Charles and John Wesley and others who had formed what has often been called the “Holy Club” (more accurately known as the Oxford Methodists). These earnest men sought not only to draw closer to God through highly regimented spiritual disciplines but also engaged in acts of charity, including visiting prisoners and helping those in need. Despite this intensity, Whitefield became exhausted by his lack of peace in his relationship with Jesus Christ. As he redoubled efforts, his severe asceticism almost drove him mad. Charles Wesley gifted him a book by the Scottish minister and professor Henry Scougal, The Life of God in the Soul of Man, that unlocked the mystery of the new birth for him. This led to the liberating experience of Whitefield’s conversion and experience of the new life in Christ.

Surprisingly, this was not his first sermon, but rather “The Necessity and Benefit of Religious Society” (i.e., small groups). But it was his second sermon, simply called “On Regeneration,” and one that he repeatedly proclaimed. Even in sermons on different topics, Whitefield frequently returned to the critical importance of the new birth. For Whitefield, central to being born again were the themes of union with Christ, the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit, and the emphasis on inward transformation that would continue to resonate throughout his ministry.

2. Whitefield was a convinced Calvinist.

By his own admission, Whitefield didn’t see himself as a theologian—at least not a theologian of the conventional sort. Instead of writing systematic theologies, Whitefield preferred to communicate his theology through sermons. Most of his evangelistic sermons feature three doctrines: conviction of sin, justification by grace through faith, and the necessity of experiencing the new birth.

But if Whitefield wasn’t a systematic theologian, that’s not to say that he didn’t have strong theological convictions. Whereas some of his fellow first-generation evangelical contemporaries like John and Charles Wesley were Arminian in their theology, Whitefield was a convinced Calvinist. In other words, Whitefield emphasized the ultimacy of God’s choice in our salvation, but not at the expense of our genuine human responsibility. God uses secondary means, like preaching and preachers, to draw his elect to himself. And he emphasized that when God justifies us, he forgives all of our sins: past, present, and future. And not only that, he imputes Jesus’s righteousness to us. And he emphasized the way God preserves those he’s saved: he promises to complete the good work that he’s begun in us.

Whitefield was willing to contend for these theological convictions in the public sphere, even when it resulted in significant interpersonal friction, most notably during the so-called Free Grace episode that split the early Methodist movement along Wesleyan-Arminian and Whitefieldian-Calvinist lines.

Whitefield on the Christian Life

Tom Schwanda, Ian Maddock

George Whitefield dedicated his life to teaching the Scriptures and calling people to know and love God. This biography explores the life of Whitefield as a prominent figure in the early evangelical revival in an honest, historical, and balanced way.

3. Whitefield warned of the dangers of being an “Almost Christian.”

Whitefield contrasted what he considered to be the biblical view of following Christ with the counterfeit understanding that did this in speech and appearance only. The former he termed an “altogether Christian,” while the latter he called an “almost Christian.” The grave danger of being an “almost Christian” was that the person was only a partial believer. Instead of seeking the guidance of God’s word to direct their life, they were more influenced by the dazzling attractions of the world. In his sermon “The Almost Christian” based on Acts 26:28, Whitefield proclaimed there were four marks that distinguished a faithful disciple of Jesus Christ. First, a believer is someone who understands and cultivates true religion (or a sincere religion of the heart).

Second, Jesus’s disciples must be filled and guided by the presence and power of the Holy Spirit. And third, they must seek to consistently deny themselves, take up their cross, and be Christ’s followers (Luke 9:23). The fourth and most challenging indicator is persecution for the cause of Christ, or at least willingness to suffer for him if needed. Interestingly, John Wesley preached on the same text with the same title three years later.

4. Whitefield hungered for communion with God in his personal life.

George Whitefield possessed a passionate desire to know and make God known to anyone who would listen to him. Shortly after his conversion in 1735, he effusively declared he experienced “sweet communion” with God. More than the emotional high of a dramatic conversion that was grounded in his union with Christ, this language communicated a deep sense of intimacy and enjoyment with the living God. He recognized already as a young man that life was difficult, and while sweet communion was not his habitual experience, nevertheless it was the consistent and lifelong desire of his heart. This superlative description of “sweet communion” was almost exclusively reserved for his relationship with God. Yet he was also capable of finding great joy in his friendship with others and designated these times as sweet fellowship.

His journals reveal he delighted in God through various spiritual practices, including prayer, meditating on Scripture, celebrating the Lord’s Supper, and even reading devotional classics from earlier Christians. These and other spiritual exercises flooded his soul with a heavenly mindedness and contemplative enjoyment of God.

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5. Whitefield taught the means of grace to encourage walking with God.

The goal of the Christian life is fullness of joy and complete union and communion with Jesus Christ. An outgrowth from Whitefield’s personal experience of God was to instruct others in the proper use of the means of grace so that they, too, might grow in intimacy with God. His sermon “Walking with God” provided the clearest description of essential spiritual practices that he hoped others would cultivate. These were reading Scripture, personal prayer, meditation on Scripture, noticing God’s providential dealings, observing the promptings or guidance of the Holy Spirit, making full use of the sacraments, and keeping company with other Christians who intentionally sought to walk with God. Throughout his writings, he added additional practices, but these seven were foundational. Since walking with God was possible only through union with Christ, Whitefield followed the Puritan practice that stressed the believer was married to Jesus Christ as a means to increase a person’s desire for this deeper enjoyment of God.

6. Whitefield was a spiritual director who guided lost and confused souls to Jesus Christ.

Whitefield is best known for his mesmerizing preaching, but he was also a highly skilled physician of the soul, or what we would call a spiritual director or guide today. He learned these principles from reading Puritan works on spirituality, conversion, and Christian growth as well as his extensive network of correspondence. People from all walks of life, both famous and common, wrote him seeking counsel. One of the primary tools of a spiritual director is asking questions, and Whitefield used prompts such as “Do you grow in grace?” and “Is the world more under your feet than usual?” Central to this ministry of directing souls to Christ is helping the person recognize that salvation is not only knowing the right doctrine cognitively but experiencing those truths deep within their heart.

7. Whitefield was famous for his itinerant, extemporaneous preaching.

Whitefield was a household name during the eighteenth century—in fact, in many ways, the first evangelical celebrity preacher. Eschewing a settled pulpit, he made his name as an itinerant field-preacher, crossing the Atlantic thirteen times and preaching a vast number of sermons throughout his life—over 18,000 by most estimates. He preached many of those sermons outdoors, often to vast audiences of more than 20,000 people.

“Field-preaching is my plan. In this, I am carried as on eagles’ wings” is how he once put it.

Beyond his reputation as the “Grand Itinerant,” Whitefield was also known as an extemporaneous preacher—in other words, he typically memorized his sermons and preached without notes. Whereas many of his contemporaries read out their sermons, Whitefield was famous for his flamboyant, dramatic preaching style. He was a talented actor in his youth, and in time he translated this ability into his preaching. When he proclaimed the gospel, the Bible was his sacred script, and makeshift pulpits became a form of sanctified stage.

The goal of the Christian life is fullness of joy and complete union and communion with Jesus Christ.

8. Whitefield was early evangelicalism’s relational glue.

Whitefield was a natural-born networker. He functioned as the hub of a widespread and otherwise disparate evangelical community, fostering a prodigious number of relationships across his relatively short but well-travelled and connected life. Indeed, just as his evangelistic ministry intentionally spanned and transcended spatial, socioeconomic, theological, and denominational boundaries, so too the relationships Whitefield developed across more than three decades of public ministry were remarkably diverse. These included revivalist counterparts like John and Charles Wesley, whose Arminian theological convictions differed subtly but significantly from his own; aristocratic patrons of the burgeoning Methodist movement, like the Calvinist Selina Hastings and the Countess of Huntingdon; and even avowed Deists, like Benjamin Franklin, who published Whitefield’s journals and sermons, enjoying a candid relationship with a figure like Whitefield who also lived his life in the public eye.

9. Whitefield was complicit in defending and expanding slavery in the American colonies.

Without doubt, one of the most troubling aspects of Whitefield’s legacy was his involvement with slavery, one of the most ubiquitous features of life in the eighteenth-century British world. At first, Whitefield was controversial for the way he criticized slave masters in the American South for the awful way they treated their slaves. But it wasn’t too long before he made the fateful decision to become a slave master himself. In 1751 he wrote, “As for the lawfulness of keeping slaves, I have no doubt.”

Unlike many of his contemporaries, Whitefield saw slaves as people created in the image of God, and he urged slaves to experience the new birth and spiritual liberation. But in a failure of biblical love and justice, he never advocated for the physical emancipation of slaves.

A product of his time and place, Whitefield was influenced, without being inevitably determined, by his context. Like all of us, he was also full of confounding contradictions. Whitefield’s failures, even more visible with the benefit of three centuries' worth of hindsight, serve as a cautionary tale of the dangers of complicity with our culture’s fallenness. But it also forces us to ask: Are there planks in our own spiritual eyes that threaten to impair the clarity of our moral vision?

10. Whitefield was the proto-evangelical.

Whitefield embodied and exemplified many of the features that have come to characterize evangelicalism for the past 300 years.

First, Whitefield was a religious entrepreneur. He blazed a trail for future generations of evangelicals by exploiting new forms of mass communication. In his case, this was the rise of a growing print and consumer culture. He used newspapers and broadsides as a way of promoting revival and reaching as wide an audience as possible.

Second, Whitefield was a model of evangelical ecumenicity. He placed a premium on mobility and chafed against provincialism and parochialism, fostering relationships with Christians from lots of different denominations. He was energetic about creating inter-denominational connections with kindred spirits.

But third, Whitefield was also willing to bypass ecclesial structures altogether. In fact, he was a pioneer in creating a trans-denominational evangelical community. In the process, he helped cultivate evangelicalism’s signature fondness for parachurch ministries and celebrity preachers.

Ian Maddock and Tom Schwanda are coauthors of Whitefield on the Christian Life: New Birth to Enjoy God.

Ian Maddock (PhD, University of Aberdeen) serves as senior lecturer in Christian thought at Sydney Missionary and Bible College. He is author of Men of One Book: A Comparison of Two Methodist Preachers, John Wesley and George Whitefield and is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

Tom Schwanda (PhD, Durham University) is associate professor of Christian formation and ministry emeritus at Wheaton College and senior fellow for Christian spirituality for the C. S. Lewis Institute discipleship ministry. He is the author of The Emergence of Evangelical Spirituality: The Age of Edwards, Newton, and Whitefield and a fellow of the Royal Historical Society.