Hello, I'm Wilson Pruitt, and you are listening to the History of Methodism Podcast. You can support us online at patreon.com/historyofmethodism. Please rate and review wherever you get your podcasts. Today’s Episode: George Whitefield.
Gloucester is a city in England, a few miles inland from the coast and the bustling port city of Bristol. Gloucester is an active city and an active region of the country. The last play of William Shakespeare’s cycle of English History, Richard III, centers on the character of the Duke of Gloucester, who, over the course of the play, will move from a nobleman to becoming the eponymous King Richard, to being deposed by Henry Tudor, as he cries out, “A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse.”
Gloucester was the birthplace of George Whitefield, two days after Christmas, on December 27, 1714. His father worked in Bristol but died when George was two. George was raised by his mother at the Bell Inn in Gloucester. He worked at the inn while he was growing up, and met people from all over the country. He didn’t go to school during his first decade of life because his family didn’t have the money for it.
All that we have about the young George Whitefield comes from his autobiography, which was a bestseller in 18th century and written with a specific purpose and specific audience in mind. George described a general sinfulness throughout his childhood. He called himself “brutish” and that he hated “instruction, and used purposely to shun all opportunities of receiving it.”1
George claims that he stole and broke sabbath. He played cards, read romances, and went to plays. The theater was very important here.
The early 18th century was not the Victorian Age of propriety in the theater. There were fairly bawdy plays traveling around the countryside. George loved the plays but he also learned from them. This is something that most of George’s biographers point out, especially Harry Stout, in his book, The Divine Dramatist. George was drawn to drama and he noticed how others were, as well. He learned how to tell a good story, to capture the attention of a crowd, and to deliver the goods when the time came.
George’s mother remarried when he was ten years old. He called it an “unhappy match.” Two years later, he finally went to a school in Gloucester called St. Mary de Crypt. He was good at memorizing facts and many of the subjects he was taught, but there wasn’t much of a point to the schooling beyond getting him out of the house. He felt no call of God, though he was noted for his speech-making ability even at this point2
Growing up, the church was vaguely a part of his life. At one point, George was living in Bristol and he read the works of Thomas à Kempis. This caused him to stop reading plays for a period, but then he fell back into old habits.
George’s autobiography was patterned after Augustine’s confessions, but with an even more general notion of sinfulness. More play reading. More avoiding God and God’s pull on him.
Still, it was in the reading of a play to his sister that George credits God’s call coming down to him. He writes in his autobiography:
One morning, as I was reading a play to my sister, said I, “Sister, God intends something for me which we know not of…How I came to say these words I knew not.3
Soon after, he met a servitor from Pembroke College, Oxford. Servitor’s were working students. Once he and his mother realized that he could go to school if he worked, George doubled his efforts in order to hone his Latin and Greek for the entrance exam. This helped him control his temptations but also offered opportunity for more sin.
Throughout his account of his early years, we have a very different early life than the Wesleys. In some ways, it feels much more intentionally constructed in order to show just how bad George had been before his conversion experience. George was a man of the people in a way that John and Charles Wesley could never be.
After he passed his exams, George entered Pembroke College, Oxford. As a servitor, he worked for wealthy students at Oxford: washing, cleaning, fetching, doing all the things. The business also gave him a chance to think about faith in a new way.
With support from back home and the money from being a servitor, George finally had the time and money to read A Serious Call to a Holy and Devout Life by William Law, described in episode 19. This lead Whitefield to start a more diligent prayer practice and to attend communion regularly, which brought him in contact with some Methodists.
Charles Wesley was leading the Holy Club when George arrived at Oxford. Charles looked after George and gave him spiritual mentorship. Charles also recommended Henry Scougal’s The Life of God in the Soul of Man from 1677.
Scougal was a Scottish scholar at the University of Aberdeen. He taught at the university while his father was a bishop in the Church of Scotland. Scougal wrote The Life of God in the Soul of Man as a letter to a friend and it maintains that conversational tone despite the depth of the topic. He writes
true religion is a union of the soul with God, a real participation of the divine nature, the very image of God drawn upon the soul, or, in the apostle's phrase, "It is Christ formed within us.4
This book changed Whitefield’s life. He later wrote:
…though I had fasted, watched, and prayed, and received the sacrament so long, yet I never knew what true religion was, till God sent me that excellent treatise, by the hands of my never-to-be-forgotten friend.5
Whitefield also began to follow the pattern of other Methodists like Benjamin Ingham with regular visits to prisons in order to preach and minister.
During this period, Whitefield had his own conversion experience, which predates Aldersgate by many years. While George’s health fluctuated, his own awareness of internal sinfulness also grew. Whitefield writes:
One Day, perceiving an uncommon Drought, and a disagreeable Clamminess in my Mouth, and using Things to allay my Thirst, but in vain, it was suggested to me, that when Jesus Christ cried out,‘I thirst,’ his Sufferings were near at an End. Upon which, I cast myself down on the Bed, crying out,‘I thirst! I thirst!’—Soon after this, I found and felt in myself that I was delivered from the Burden that had so heavily oppressed me! The Spirit of Mourning was taken from me, and I knew what it was truly to rejoice in God my Saviour, and, for some Time, could not avoid singing Psalms wherever I was; but my Joy gradually became more settled, and, blessed be God, has abode and increased in my soul (saving a few casual Intermissions) ever since!6
His time as an undergrad was up and down, but when he missed meetings with Charles, Charles would track him down and check on what was going on. George would continually seek out advice from John and John would help him as he could. As Thomas Kidd writes,
“Whitefield leaned heavily on John Wesley for guidance. In the absence of a biological father, Whitefield called Wesley his “spiritual father in Christ.” He asked him myriad questions on topics including the healthiest diet, the best place to recuperate, theological dilemmas, and family struggles. In a lengthy letter from July 1735, Whitefield asked Wesley about a Dissenting friend who wished to join the Anglican Communion. Was Dissenting baptism legitimate, or did his friend need to be rebaptized before joining the Anglican Church?”7
One letter George Whitefield to John takes up over 120 lines of dense text with detailed questions and observations about his own situation as well as physical and spiritual challenges that he is faceing. John responded in seven short sentence fragments that cut right to the point
Around this time, Whitefield had a dream that convinced him to seek holy orders in the Church of England.8 Later in his ministry, George was not always so patient with people claiming instruction from dreams, but he related this one in his journals. John and Charles Wesley had already left for Georgia at this time, but George was able to connect with a rich welshman named Sir John Philips, who was both a Member of Parliament and a Methodist. He pledged to support George with 30 pounds a year so that he could study for his oral examination in ministry.
During this season, he led the Methodists at Oxford. As Geordan Hammond writes,
From October 1735 through to January 1738 the affairs of the Oxford Methodists were largely left to Whitefield as John and Charles Wesley had gone as missionaries to the British colony of Georgia. In addition to being ordained deacon, during this time Whitefield superintended the work of the Oxford Methodists, while also ministering in London, Dummer in Hampshire, and Stonehouse in Gloucestershire.9
George was finally able to preach in June of 1736. As Thomas Kidd writes:
A capacity crowd pressed into pews at Gloucester’s St. Mary de Crypt church on June 27, 1736. They had come to hear George Whitefield preach publicly for the first time. His mother, Elizabeth, forsaken by her husband but loved by her son, sat beaming in the front row. Many friends and acquaintances were there, happy for the Gloucester boy who had made them proud by graduating from Oxford.”10
He also preached at the Tower of London for a season and at Ludgate prison in London nearly every Tuesday. As Whitefield’s preaching was making him more popular in London, John wrote to him from Georgia and asked him to come and take over the mission to Georgia.
In March of 1737, Whitefield met with Oglethorpe for the first time. He agreed to go to Georgia, but their departure was delayed while Oglethorpe finished business in England.
During this time, he preached one of his most famous and enduring sermons, “The Nature and Necessity of Our New Birth.” Reading the sermon today, one doesn’t feel the pull of Whitefield’s charisma. It reads like many others from the period. For instance,
To be in Christ therefore, in the full Import of the Word, must certainly mean something more than a bare outward Proferation, or being called after his Name.11
On January 6, 1738, Whitefield finally left for America. The journey was long but productive for Whitefield. He began to publish journal accounts as he travelled from Gravesend to Deal in Kent, then around the Bay of Biscayne to Gibraltar. James Hutton, the man with whom John Wesley stayed after his return from Georgia, published these accounts and they were big sellers.
After another two months at sea, Whitefield landed at a Savanah that welcomed him and didn’t associate him with John Wesley. He preached to smaller crowds and administered to the community.
He connected with the Salzburgers, the religious refugees from Austria who had befriended John Wesley. George tried to work on founding an orphanage in the colony. Yet by August, he was ready to return to England.
His journey back to England would be long just as his trip away. He first went up to Charleston, a more established and Anglican location.
Whitefield preached in Charleston and was able to avoid conservative push back because he was preaching to raise money for an orphanage in Savanahh. In some ways, Whitefield helped to innovate with this method of evangelism. You may not like what he says, but you can’t get angry at orphans, can you? He wasn’t the first to preach for a cause, but he mastered the technique throughout his career. It helped him preach in places where he wasn’t invited.
His first journal was fully published at this time and was a best seller in England. Thomas Kidd notes how folks would read excerpts in public squares because of Whitefield’s popularity.12
As his name was spreading back home, Whitefield landed in Ireland, and traveled across that land, shocked at the poverty and blaming Catholicism and a lack of biblical teaching.
He made it back to London in December of 1738. His first night back, he attended the Fetter Lane Society. He writes in his journal:
About noon I reached London, was received with much joy by my Christian friends, and joined with them in psalms and thanksgiving for my safe arrival. My heart was greatly enlarged thereby.13
Crowds came to his preaching and Whitefield was encouraged by God’s movement.
Whitefield also corresponded with a Welsh evangelist, Howell Harris, who had led a revival In that country in 1737. Harris was a Calvinist Anglican (there were many such at that time), but he itinerated, which drew condemnations from Anglican authorities. Whitefield wrote a letter of encouragement to Harris and Harris responded joyfully, remarking on the importance of Whitefield’s journal on his life.14
In the last week of 1738, George preached nine times. He writes: Before my arrival, I thought I should envy my brethren’s success in ministry; but, blessed by God, I rejoice in it, and am glad to see Christ’s kingdom come, whatsoever instruments God shall make use of to bring it about.15
All of which gets us back to the end of our last episode with the New Years Love Feast with John and Charles Wesley, George Whitefield, and the other soon to be leaders of the Methodist Movement at the Fetter Lane Society.
1739 will be a pivotal year in the History of Methodism. Soon after the New Year, George Whitefield will go to Bristol and witness the start of a revival. He will write to John to follow him there, as George is on his way back to America. It is in Bristol where the Methodist meetings become a movement. Even though we have spent a little time in Bristol with the life of George Whitefield, in order to understand the revival, we need to understand this city by the sea, the character of which helped spark revival in England and around the world.
Next time on the History of Methodism.
Sources
Thomas S. Kidd, George Whitefield: America’s Spiritual Founding Father (New Haven: Yale UP, 2014).
Geordan Hammond, “Whitefield, John Wesley, and Revival Leadership”, in George Whitefield: Life, Context, and Legacy, edited by Geordan Hammond and David Ceri Jones (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2016), 115-131.
- Whitefield, Sketches, 10. ↩︎
- Whitefield, Sketches, 12. ↩︎
- Whitefield, Sketches, 16. ↩︎
- Scougal ↩︎
- Whitefield, Sketches, 21. ↩︎
- Whitefield, Sketches, 34-35. ↩︎
- Kidd, 34. ↩︎
- Whitefield, Sketches, 43. ↩︎
- Hammond, 100-101. ↩︎
- Kidd, 38. ↩︎
- Whitefield, The Nature and Necessity…, 8. ↩︎
- Kidd, 58. ↩︎
- Whitefield, Sketches, 62; Whitefield, Journal, December 8, 1738. ↩︎
- Kidd, 62. ↩︎
- Whitefield, Sketches, 64; Whitefield, Journal, December 30, 1738. ↩︎