George Whitefield

This paper introduces and details the work on the correspondence of George Whitefield project to date. Approximately 2,700 letters have been collected for the project thus far. They will collectively shed new light on the 18th century Evangelical Revival.

Controversy often followed the itinerant ministry of the transatlantic revivalist George Whitefield. Whether it involved his dispute with Wesleyan Methodists over predestination, or his challenges to what he termed “unconverted ministers,” Whitefield, especially in his youth, courted controversy and even welcomed it. However, after his first preaching trip to Scotland Whitefield found himself on the receiving end of serious criticism by ministers of the Associate Presbytery, many of whom, like the brothers Ralph and Ebenezer Erskine, he once counted as friends. As their dispute over ecclesiology grew more heated, Whitefield himself cooled in his taste for debate – it was at this time that he began to negotiate a truce with John Wesley, and softened in his critiques of Anglican clergy. Clary’s chapter outlines the nature of Whitefield’s relationship to the Associate Presbytery, his own developing ecclesiological convictions, and the resulting controversy that ensued upon his refusal to limit his preaching to their churches only, in neglect of
Church of Scotland pulpits.

Arnold Dallimore is well-known for his two-volume biography of evangelist George Whitefield. This essay explores Dallimore's own personal biography, his growing up in impoverished conditions in Depression-era Canada, his education at Toronto Baptist Seminary, his various ministerial challenges, and the factors involved in writing his magnum opus. It is written towards encouraging other "ordinary pastors" to be used of God in their own life situation, whether or not to do something extraordinary, in Dallimore's case, but to always be faithful to their calling.

In this book Steve Johnstone brings together the Reformed doctrines of Covenant Theology and the subject of evangelism. How should the covenants of Scripture, and their insights into God's single plan of redemption throughout history, inform the actual content of an evangelist's Gospel today? And how can our preaching as evangelists be enriched by the covenants of Scripture?

This paper explores the first signs of “Evangelicalism” at Oxford University and documents the reaction to it from the University’s leaders. The paper traces the development of three evangelical strands; Wesleyan Methodism, Calvinistic Methodism and Parochial Anglican Evangelicalism. Using material from the many published histories and biographies, archive sources and contemporary newspapers and pamphlets, this paper examines a number of key writings and incidents in the early history of Evangelicalism at Oxford, including the celebrated case of the expulsion of six students from the University for “Methodism” in 1768, in order to provide a clearer picture of the extent, and causes, of Oxford University’s hostility to Evangelical ideas and practices in the 18th Century.

This paper examines three principal research questions: (1) What evidence is available from Oxford on the question of how distinctive Methodism and Evangelicalism were? (2) What did the leaders of Oxford University find so objectionable in Methodism and Evangelicalism? and (3) What was the dominant theology of Oxford University during this period of hostility towards the Evangelical faith?

This is an early outline of my thesis developing a theology of evangelical conversion through the theology of John Wesley and George Whitefield. The section on Wesley's theology is further developed than Whitefield in this paper.

This paper was presented at the April 2015 Society for the Study of Theology Conference and the University of Nottingham. The conference theme was ecclesiology and thus this paper also addresses the relevance of conversion, Wesley and Whitefield in relation to evangelicalism.

This book is an ambitious assertion of the inadequacy of trying to describe the forces of this world without reference to God. McFadyen's method is to seek to rehabilitate the language of sin-'sin-talk'-for public discourse. He argues that this rehabilitation is necessary as public discourse occurs in a pragmatically atheist environment and so misses the explanatory power that can only be found by reference to theological categories. He conceives of sin-talk as a reasonable explanation for human pathology alongside and additional to other disciplines. He works this out in relation to the doctrine of original sin, through an extended exploration of the literature relating to the pathologies of child sexual abuse and the Nazi holocaust. He then brings these into dialogue with theology through Augustine's doctrine of original sin and the binding of the will, and the lens of feminist theology. The force of argument and methodological openness he sustains throughout the book is as impressive as it is rare, which makes this a potentially paradigmatic engagement for practical theology. Regardless of whether the reader ends us swayed by McFadyen's reconception of original sin or his eventual conclusion the scope and ambition of this book sets a high bar for the various theological disciplines that might seek to contribute to public discourse.

George Whitefield and John Wesley preached a gospel embedded with elements found in the doctrine of theosis. While Wesley is well-known to embrace such an approach, Reformed perspectives disagree about how to view theosis, or whether theosis is even a valid approach to Christian theology. The Calvinistic Whitefield utilized the concepts found in theosis in a way that is consistent with his broader theology of conversion. Therefore, John Wesley and George Whitefield agreed in their approach to theosis, which is not surprising due to their agreement on the theology of conversion in general.

The Methodist movement (1739-1803)1 began during the Enlightenment. At that time, women were not respected in leadership. The independence of this movement allowed women to preach, although the male leaders resisted. Despite their status, women in the early Methodist movement proved to be effective in their evangelistic efforts. This was accomplished by demonstrating Christlikeness, experimenting with different aspects of ministry, and discovering their call. They were eventually recognized as legitimate preachers. The Methodist movement was foundational for women as leaders.

George Whitefield (1714-70) was the eighteenth-century’s best known and most widely travelled evangelical revivalists. An Anglican clergyman, Whitefield soon transcended his denominational context as his itinerant ministry fuelled a Protestant renewal movement in Britain and the American colonies. He was one of the founders of Methodism, establishing a distinct brand of the movement with a Calvinist orientation, but also the leading itinerant and international preacher of the evangelical movement in its early phase. Called the ‘Apostle of the English empire’, he preached throughout the whole of the British Isles and in nearly every town along the eastern seaboard of America.

This collection offers a major reassessment of Whitefield’s life, context, and legacy, bringing together a distinguished interdisciplinary team of scholars from both sides of the Atlantic. In chapters that cover historical, theological, and literary themes, many addressed for the first time, the volume suggests that Whitefield was a highly complex figure who has been much misunderstood. Highly malleable, Whitefield’s persona was shaped by many audiences during his lifetime and continues to be highly contested. This volume provides a wide-ranging overview of the life and career of George Whitefield—the ‘Grand Itinerant’ of the eighteenth-century British Atlantic world.

The Limits of a Catholic Spirit fills the gap that is John Wesley and Catholicism. No other book has provided such an in-depth study of the perils Wesley faced when he encountered Catholicism. With the use of primary sources that tell of anti-Methodist riots in Ireland to Wesley's preachers getting kidnapped and forced to serve in the army, this study will provide you with historical information you've never encountered. It will explore questions that have held Wesley scholars captive for decades.
Was John Wesley responsible for sparking the anti-Catholic Gordon Riots of 1780 in London? Yates searched eighteenth-century documents in the National Archives of the United Kingdom to find out.
Was John Wesley aligned with the Jesuits?
Was John Wesley, a Jacobite, an enemy of the British Crown?
Did John Wesley require Irish Catholics to denounce Catholicism to join Methodist societies?
By the end of The Limits of a Catholic Spirit, you'll find answers to all these questions and more.

Tells how the evangelist George Whitefield, on his return to England from the American colonies in 1742, brought with him a black boy whom he left with the Moravians to bring up and educate until he was twenty-one. It explores Whitefield’s motives in entrusting “Andrew the Negro Boy” to Moravian care, expands on previous accounts, and shows how this relates to other episodes in Whitefield’s relationship with the Moravian Church before the decisive violent break following the publication of his Expostulatory Letter (1753).
George Whitefield’s friendship with the future Moravian leader James Hutton began when they were both in their early twenties. When Hutton established himself as a bookseller, it was only natural for Whitefield to publish through his friend’s shop, and to visit the Christian fellowship group (the Fetter Lane Society) that Hutton had established at his premises. Even when the Fetter Lane Society had taken a decisively Moravian turn, Whitefield continued to attend meetings, and occasionally preached there before his departure for America.
Whitefield published in 1740 a criticism of slaves’ treatment in the southern American colonies and sometimes preached to slaves. Nevertheless, as early as 1738, Whitefield had called for an end to General Oglethorpe’s and the Georgia trustees’ prohibition of slavery. So it is not entirely surprising that when Whitefield returned from a preaching tour of America, he brought with him a slave child, whom he “gave” to the Moravians. The episode is ignored by Whitefield’s biographers (excepting Tyerman, who relegates it to a footnote), but a brief account is given in Daniel Benham, Memoirs of James Hutton (1856).
After 1750, the Georgia trustees sanctioned slavery, and Whitefield developed a defence of the institution, claiming its full scriptural justification. Over the coming years, he added to his own stock of slaves, and emerged as perhaps the most energetic, and conspicuous, evangelical defender and practitioner of slavery.

Lee Gatiss’ Cornerstones of Salvation is a model for historical theology done in service of the church. The scholarship is penetrating in its depth, yet written in an engaging manner able to speak to the general reader. Indeed, the historical questions have been aptly chosen for their clear relevance to the needs of the Reformed community today. What are the fundamentals of saving doctrine essential for contemporary audiences to hear? In the light of the New Perspective, can we still preach justification by faith? In fact, in an age of sound bites and video clips, should local congregational preaching still be the top priority? How should Christian parents present the faith to their children, assuming they are outside of the faith being beckoned in, or are they inside the faith being nurtured to grow? With contemporary culture demanding inclusion, is there room for some degree of doctrinal diversity amongst today’s adherents of the Westminster Confession? With calls for unity in the face of Christianity’s minority status in contemporary Western society, are there limits to making common cause with Protestants from other traditions?

In short, Cornerstones of Salvation shrewdly mines the Christian past for helpful insights on essential issues facing the Reformed tradition today. Readers will be well rewarded by reading it cover to cover.

-- Ashley Null, DFG-Cranmer-Projekt, Theologische Fakultät, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.

In this super new selection, Lee Gatiss addresses themes of classical Reformed theology with characteristic clarity and verve. If the material on atonement, justification, and union with Christ is of capital importance, the account of Grindal’s approach to preaching is groundbreaking and compelling. And there is much more besides. Here is an author with that rare and marvellous ability to analyse and articulate essential contours of confessional truth, through detailed yet lively conversation with great thought-leaders of the past, in ways that are at once profound and readable, incisive, penetrating, and weighty, without ever being heavy.

-- Benjamin Dean, Lecturer in Systematic Theology and Dean of Postgraduate Studies, George Whitefield College, CapeTown, South Africa.

The question of how theology shapes a Christian historian’s reading of the past has been debated thoroughly in various academic periodicals. Should historians recognise the role of providence in their accounts of past events? Should they sympathise with their subject’s theology? Can objectivity be lost due to theological bias? And, last but not least, is there a compromise of faith if one writes “natural” instead of “supernatural” history? Such questions are important for understanding the historian’s profession. Arnold Dallimore, who trained and specialised in pastoral ministry in Canada, wrote an influential biography of the revivalist George Whitefield, as well as others on Charles and Susanna Wesley, Edward Irving, and Charles Spurgeon. How did his Reformed theological perspective impact his historiography? How does his work fit into larger historiographical debates concerning the nature of Christian history? While other books look at Christian historiography using abstract and methodological approaches, this book examines the subject precisely by looking at the life and work of an individual historian. It does so by placing Dallimore in the context of being a minister in twentieth-century Canada as well as his role in the development of Reformed Theology in the Anglosphere. It also examines the quality of his various biographies focusing on key issues such as the nature of religious revival, the problem of Christianity and slavery, and the question of charismatic religious experience. His study concludes by examining the relationship between the discipline and profession of church history and asking what is required for one to be considered a church historian.

George Whitefield's ability to enthrall audiences through a potent combination of drama, religious rhetoric, and imperial pride is well documented, as is the Hallam Theater Company's successful mid-eighteenth century tour of North America. Yet, as historian Odai Johnson recently asserted, scholars have almost always placed the two performers (and the larger movements they represented) in opposition. This article demonstrates that George Whitefield and Lewis Hallam Sr.—lead purveyors of the pulpit and the stage in mid-eighteenth century colonial America—should be understood as mutual contributors to the development of early American performance and, ultimately, professional theater. Both rose to prominence during a specific period (the mid-eighteenth century) in a specific place (the British American colonies) for a shared reason: to use professional performance to entrance the most colonists as possible. Ultimately, Whitefield and Hallam were quite different men who, through common pursuit of fame in North America, demonstrated just how much theatricality and religion—despite imagining themselves as oppositional forces—became entangled by the mid-eighteenth century.

Francis Asbury was a citizen of the West-Midlands of England. Although none of his early preaching circuits in England involved Francis Asbury traveling to Ireland, he eventually interacted with the Methodist worshipers from the Palatine settlements in County Limerick, Ireland, when he set foot in the English colonies of America.

When did the friendship of America's doctor of medicine and America's George Washington of Christianity first begin? Francis Asbury and Dr. Benjamin Rush were friends in Philadelphia, however, there is evidence their friendship began much earlier- perhaps when the pair were both younger and in London, England.

This paper explores the relationship between two new religious movements of the eighteenth century, Methodism and Evangelicalism. The paper argues that Evangelicalism arose as a moderated, bourgeois form of Methodism, learning from the remarkable hostility that Methodism encountered from both within the Anglican Church and from the public.

Despite repeated assertions by Evangelical historians, British Evangelicalism did not form independently from Methodism but instead began as a conservative Anglican variant of Methodism, shorn of those features that Anglicans objected to, specifically emotionalism, anti-parochialism, lay-leadership, theological heterodoxy and denominational indifference.  Methodism encountered violent hostility from its beginnings, but theological criticism was slower to emerge. As criticism of Methodism, and violence towards Methodists, grew, John Wesley had to choose between greater conformity and greater autonomy. In the 1760s, Wesley chose the latter and the Anglican Evangelicals chose the former, and the two movements finally separated. This paper reviews the issues that caused most opposition, and the position of the Methodist “fellow travellers” within the Church of England on these issues.

By the time that Methodism separated from the Church of England, Anglican Evangelicals had already separated from Methodism. The slow separation of the Methodists from the Church of England has been well documented, for instance by Harrison (1945) Baker (1970) and Royle (2008). This paper is an attempt to provoke further research into the Methodist origins of British Evangelicalism. The attempt to downplay the significance of the Methodists in the “evangelical revival” by Anglican writers began in the 1760s, as did the neglect within Methodist historiography of Charles Wesley and George Whitfield, the other co-founders and co-leaders of Methodism. The paper closes by discussing the tactics of historiography that Anglicans and Methodists have used to create pure lineages for their respective movements, despite the considerable evidence of shared origins.

A short article about the inerrancy of the Bible.  I show from the writings of Augustus Toplady, George Whitefield, James Hervey, and John Newton that Anglican Evangelicals of the 18th century held that the Bible was both infallible and unerring.  I trace the possible sources of this in the Book of Common Prayer and Thirty-nine Articles, as well as in the Bible itself (Proverbs 30:5).

George Whitefi eld (1714-1770) demonstrated a keen awareness of his own place in some greater plan when he expostulated to his sister while still a youth: 'God intends something for me which we know not of. ' 1 He play-acted being an Anglican vicar long before his own calling to ministry. 2 Indeed, on the day aft er his ordination as deacon in Gloucester Cathedral in 1736, Whitefi eld experienced a calling from God during his daily devotions. In his soul, he heard the words 'Speak out, Paul' , which confi rmed his new identity and ministry as cleric. 3 Consequently, like many Christians in the course of history (e.g. Ignatius of Antioch and Calvin of Geneva), Whitefi eld gave shape to this nascent sense of vocation by constructing his own (early) autobiographical refl ections in his Journals around the experiences of the apostle Paul: his dramatic conversion on the Damascus Road, cross-cultural commitments, itinerancy, imperial travels and dignity in suff ering. 4 Since the dissolution of the monasteries in Reformation England, new justifi cation was necessary for an itinerant evangelistic ministry among clergy beyond the parish, which was provided to Whitefi eld through his Pauline sense of vocation. Th e poet William Cowper confi rmed such a calling in these words from the poem Hope : Paul's love of Christ, and steadiness unbrib' d, Were copied close in him [Whitefi eld], and well transcrib' d.