Who Was George Whitefield? Preacher of the Great Awakening

Biography Revival Preaching Evangelism

George Whitefield was an English evangelist who lived from 1714 to 1770. He was the best-known preacher of the eighteenth-century revival called the Great Awakening. Ordained in the Church of England, he took the gospel out of the churches and into the fields, preaching to crowds of thousands, sometimes tens of thousands, in England, Scotland, Wales and the American colonies. He crossed the Atlantic thirteen times and died in Massachusetts. His one great theme was the new birth: everyone must be born again by the Spirit of God.

He worked alongside John and Charles Wesley and is remembered with them as a founder of Methodism, though he differed from John Wesley on predestination. Here's the story of his life and where to start with his sermons.

An innkeeper's son

Whitefield was born on December 16, 1714 (December 27 by the modern calendar), at the Bell Inn in Gloucester, the youngest of seven children. His father died when he was two. As a boy he helped his mother at the inn and loved to act in school plays, a gift that later showed in his vivid preaching.

He went to Oxford in 1732 as a servitor at Pembroke College, which meant he paid his way by waiting on wealthier students. There he met Charles Wesley and joined the "Holy Club," the small group of serious students that included John and Charles Wesley and that other students mocked as "Methodists."

Born again

Whitefield tried hard to be holy. He fasted, prayed for hours and gave to the poor, and he grew ill and miserable doing it. Charles Wesley lent him Henry Scougal's book The Life of God in the Soul of Man, and it showed him that true religion was not outward duties but the life of God in the soul. After a long struggle, in 1735, he trusted Christ and found peace. He was one of the first of the Holy Club to come to this assurance, and the new birth became the theme of his preaching for the rest of his life.

The Bishop of Gloucester ordained him a deacon in June 1736, and he preached his first sermon soon after in St. Mary de Crypt in Gloucester, the church where he had been baptized. That sermon, on the value of Christian fellowship, opens his Selected Sermons.

The field preacher

Within a year the young preacher was famous. Crowds filled London churches to hear him, and his sermon on the new birth was printed and sold widely. In 1738 he sailed to Georgia, the new colony, and returned determined to build an orphan house there.

Back in England, many pulpits closed to him because his preaching was thought too "enthusiastic." So in February 1739 he preached in the open air to the coal miners of Kingswood, near Bristol. Accounts say the tears ran down their black faces. Soon he was preaching in the fields of London, at Moorfields, Kennington Common and Blackheath, to crowds no building could hold. He persuaded John Wesley to try field preaching too, and Wesley's own field ministry began that spring.

His voice could carry over a huge crowd. He preached with his whole body, weeping, pleading and acting out the stories of the Bible. But he wasn't putting on a show. He wanted souls:

I would speak, till I could speak no more, so I could but bring you to Christ.
The Works of George Whitefield, Vol. 5, The Folly and Danger of being not righteous enough

America and the Great Awakening

Whitefield made seven trips to America. On his second, in 1739 and 1740, he preached from Georgia to New England, and the colonies had never seen anything like it. Benjamin Franklin heard him in Philadelphia, became his friend and printed his sermons and journals. In New England he stayed with Jonathan Edwards, and revival spread through the towns he visited. In Georgia he founded the Bethesda Orphan House near Savannah, and he spent years raising money for it.

His later visits carried him up and down the coast again and again. He was probably the best-known man in colonial America, and he helped tie the scattered colonies together through a shared experience of revival.

There is a hard side to the story too. Whitefield rebuked masters who were cruel to their slaves and preached to enslaved Africans, but he also owned slaves to support Bethesda and pressed for slavery to be allowed in Georgia. Christians who honor his preaching today regret that part of his record.

Whitefield and Wesley

In 1740 John Wesley published a sermon against predestination called Free Grace. Whitefield, who held the Calvinist view that God chooses His people and keeps them to the end, answered him in an open letter, printed in the fourth volume of his Works. He wrote with real affection:

O then be not angry with me, dear and honoured Sir, if now I deliver my soul, by telling you, that I think in this you greatly err.
The Works of George Whitefield, Vol. 4, A Letter to the Reverend Mr. John Wesley

For a while the two men went separate ways, and their followers formed separate societies. But they were reconciled, preached in each other's chapels, and stayed friends. Whitefield asked that Wesley preach his funeral sermon, and Wesley did.

He was always grieved by quarrels among Christians:

There is nothing grieves me more, than the differences amongst God's people.
The Works of George Whitefield, Vol. 5, Marks of a true Conversion

Later years

Whitefield married Elizabeth James, a widow, in 1741. Their only child, a son, died as a baby. He preached in Scotland many times, most famously at the Cambuslang revival of 1742, and he visited Ireland, Bermuda and every county in England and Wales. In London his followers built the Tabernacle at Moorfields and a chapel on Tottenham Court Road, and he served as a chaplain to the Countess of Huntingdon, who supported Calvinistic Methodist preachers.

He preached, by most counts, about eighteen thousand times. Asthma and overwork wore him down, but he wouldn't stop. On September 29, 1770, he preached in the open air at Exeter, New Hampshire, for nearly two hours. He died early the next morning in the parsonage at Newburyport, Massachusetts, at fifty-five, and he was buried beneath the pulpit of the church there.

What he preached

The new birth. No one is a Christian by baptism, church attendance or good behavior alone. "All things must become new" in the soul by the work of the Holy Spirit.

Christ our righteousness. We are accepted by God only because of Christ's righteousness, given to us by faith. His sermon "The Lord our Righteousness" is one of his best:

As I have often told you, so I tell you again, an unapplied Christ is no Christ at all.
The Works of George Whitefield, Vol. 5, The Lord our Righteousness

Free grace. Salvation is God's gift from first to last, and Whitefield loved to offer it freely to every hearer.

Real religion, not form. He warned again and again against being an "almost Christian," fond of the outward form and a stranger to its power.

Why he's still read

Whitefield's printed sermons can't give you his voice. But they show what he preached: Christ, the new birth and free grace, pressed on every hearer with tears. Preachers read him to learn how to plead with souls. Other readers find that his short, earnest sermons still ask the question that matters most: has God made you a new creature?

Where to start

TheWay Library has five books by or about Whitefield, all free to read. Start with Selected Sermons of George Whitefield, six sermons with an introduction on Whitefield as a preacher. Then go to the fifth volume of his Works for "The Lord our Righteousness" and "Marks of a true Conversion." For his life, read John Gillies's Memoirs of Rev. George Whitefield.

Our guide to George Whitefield's books describes all five, and our collection of George Whitefield quotes gathers his best lines. For his friend and partner in the revival, see who was John Wesley. You'll find all his books on the George Whitefield author page.