79 Facts About George Whitefield

George Whitefield was ordained after receiving his Bachelor of Arts degree.

George Whitefield 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 1740, George Whitefield traveled to British North America where he preached a series of Christian revivals that became part of the Great Awakening.

George Whitefield's methods were controversial, and he engaged in numerous debates and disputes with other clergymen.

George Whitefield received widespread recognition during his ministry; he preached at least 18,000 times to perhaps ten million listeners in the British Empire.

George Whitefield used the technique of evoking strong emotion, then using the vulnerability of his enthralled audience to preach.

George Whitefield was the fifth son of Thomas George Whitefield and Elizabeth Edwards, who kept an inn at Gloucester.

George Whitefield's father died when George was two years old, and he subsequently helped his mother with the inn.

George Whitefield was educated at The Crypt School in Gloucester and at Pembroke College, Oxford.

George Whitefield therefore came up to the University of Oxford as a servitor, the lowest rank of undergraduates.

George Whitefield preached his first sermon at St Mary de Crypt Church in his home town of Gloucester, a week after his ordination as deacon.

George Whitefield formed and was the president of the first Methodist conference, but he soon relinquished the position to concentrate on evangelistic work.

George 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 George Whitefield's was taught.

George Whitefield wanted the orphanage to be a place of strong Gospel influence, with a wholesome atmosphere and strong discipline.

George Whitefield refused to give the trustees a financial accounting.

The trustees objected to George Whitefield's using "a wrong method" to control the children, who "are often kept praying and crying all the night".

George Whitefield employed print systematically, sending advance men to put up broadsides and distribute handbills announcing his sermons.

Much of George Whitefield's publicity was the work of William Seward, a wealthy layman who accompanied George Whitefield.

George Whitefield furnished newspapers and booksellers with material, including copies of Whitefield's writings.

George Whitefield sought to influence the colonies after he returned to England.

George Whitefield contracted to have his autobiographical Journals published throughout America.

George Whitefield was a plantation owner and slaveholder and viewed the work of slaves as essential for funding his orphanage's operations.

George Whitefield believed that they were human and was angered that they were treated as "subordinate creatures".

In 1747, George Whitefield attributed the financial woes of his Bethesda Orphanage to Georgia's prohibition of black people in the colony.

George Whitefield argued that "the constitution of that colony [Georgia] is very bad, and it is impossible for the inhabitants to subsist" while blacks were banned.

Between 1748 and 1750, George Whitefield campaigned for the legalisation of African-American emigration into the colony because the trustees of Georgia had banned slavery.

George Whitefield argued that the colony would never be prosperous unless slaves were allowed to farm the land.

George Whitefield wanted slavery legalized for the prosperity of the colony as well as for the financial viability of the Bethesda Orphanage.

George Whitefield saw the "legalization of as part personal victory and part divine will".

George Whitefield argued a scriptural justification for black residency as slaves.

George Whitefield increased the number of the black children at his orphanage, using his preaching to raise money to house them.

George Whitefield became "perhaps the most energetic, and conspicuous, evangelical defender and practitioner of the rights of black people".

In 1740, during his second visit to America, George Whitefield published "an open letter to the planters of South Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland" chastising them for their cruelty to their slaves.

George Whitefield is remembered as one of the first to preach to slaves.

Franklin had previously dismissed as exaggeration reports of George Whitefield preaching to crowds of the order of tens of thousands in England.

George Whitefield then estimated his distance from Whitefield and calculated the area of a semicircle centred on Whitefield.

George Whitefield admired Whitefield as a fellow intellectual, and published several of his tracts, but thought Whitefield's plan to run an orphanage in Georgia would lose money.

Letters exchanged between Franklin and George Whitefield can be found at the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia.

In 1749, Franklin chose the George Whitefield meeting house, with its Charity School, to be purchased as the site of the newly-formed Academy of Philadelphia which opened in 1751, followed in 1755 with the College of Philadelphia, both the predecessors of the University of Pennsylvania.

George Whitefield's wife believed that she had been "but a load and burden" to him.

George Whitefield always preserved great decency and decorum in his conduct towards her.

In 1770, the 55-year-old George Whitefield continued preaching in spite of poor health.

George Whitefield's will stated that all this money had lately been left him 'in a most unexpected way and unthought of means.

George Whitefield was probably the most famous religious figure of the eighteenth century.

George Whitefield was a preacher capable of commanding thousands on two continents through the sheer power of his oratory.

In terms of theology, George Whitefield, unlike Wesley, was a supporter of Calvinism.

George Whitefield welcomed opposition because as he said, "the more I am opposed, the more joy I feel".

George Whitefield chastised other clergy for teaching only "the shell and shadow of religion" because they did not hold the necessity of a new birth, without which a person would be "thrust down into Hell".

George Whitefield said that Edmund Gibson, Bishop of London with supervision over Anglican clergy in America, knew no "more of Christianity, than Mahaomet, or an Infidel".

George Whitefield issued a blanket indictment of New England's Congregational ministers for their "lack of zeal".

In 1740, George Whitefield published attacks on "the works of two of Anglicanism's revered seventeenth-century authors".

George Whitefield wrote that John Tillotson, archbishop of Canterbury, had "no more been a true Christian than had Muhammad".

George Whitefield attacked Richard Allestree's The Whole Duty of Man, one of Anglicanism's most popular spiritual tracts.

At least once George Whitefield had his followers burn the tract "with great Detestation".

In England and Scotland, George Whitefield bitterly accused John Wesley of undermining his work.

George Whitefield preached against Wesley, arguing that Wesley's attacks on predestination had alienated "very many of my spiritual children".

Wesley replied that George Whitefield's attacks were "treacherous" and that George Whitefield had made himself "odious and contemptible".

Early in his career, George Whitefield criticized the Church of England.

Trapp called the Journals "blasphemous" and accused George Whitefield of being "besotted either with pride or madness".

In England, by 1739 when he was ordained priest, George Whitefield wrote that "the spirit of the clergy began to be much embittered" and that "churches were gradually denied me".

George Whitefield responded by labelling Anglican clergy as "lazy, non-spiritual, and pleasure seeking".

George Whitefield rejected ecclesiastical authority claiming that 'the whole world is my parish'.

In 1740, George Whitefield had attacked Tillotson and Richard Allestree's The Whole Duty of Man.

George Whitefield's itinerant preaching throughout the colonies was opposed by Bishop Benson who had ordained him for a settled ministry in Georgia.

George Whitefield replied that if bishops did not authorize his itinerant preaching, God would give him the authority.

In 1740, Jonathan Edwards invited George Whitefield to preach in his church in Northampton.

Later, Edwards delivered a series of sermons containing but "thinly veiled critiques" of George Whitefield's preaching, "warning against over-dependence upon a preacher's eloquence and fervency".

George Whitefield would be derided with names such as "Dr Squintum", mocking him for his esotropia.

Many New Englanders claimed that George Whitefield destroyed "New England's orderly parish system, communities, and even families".

The "Declaration of the Association of the County of New Haven, 1745" stated that after George Whitefield's preaching "religion is in a far worse state than it was".

George Whitefield was humble before the countess saying that he cried when he was "thinking of your Ladyship's condescending to patronize such a dead dog as I am".

George Whitefield now said that he "highly esteemed bishops of the Church of England because of their sacred character".

In 1763, in a defense of Methodism, George Whitefield "repeated contrition for much contained in his Journals".

George Whitefield's "Abraham Offering His Son Isaac" is an example of a sermon whose whole structure resembles a theatrical play.

George Whitefield's sermons were widely reputed to inspire his audience's devotion.

George Whitefield was an excellent orator as well, strong in voice and adept at extemporaneity.

George Whitefield's voice was so expressive that people are said to have wept just hearing him allude to "Mesopotamia".

In 1747 he published A Further Account of God's Dealings with the Reverend George Whitefield, covering the period from his ordination to his first voyage to Georgia.

George Whitefield wrote several hymns and revised one by Charles Wesley.