George Whitefield (27 December 1714 – 30 September 1770) was an English Anglican cleric who was one of the founders of Methodism and the evangelical movement.
Biography[]
George Whitefield was born in Gloucester, England in 1714, and he was able to attend Oxford for free because of his work there as a servant to fellows and fellow-commoners. While at college, Whitefield and the brothers John and Charles Wesley created the "Holy Club" to study Christianity, and an illness influenced Whitefield to turn to the Church of England and become a deacon. In 1738, he became a parish priest in Savannah, Georgia, and he raised funds to establish the Bethesda Orphanage, the oldest extant charity in North America. He wanted to the orphanage to be a place of strong Gospel influence, having strong discipline; the children were often kept praying and crying all night. In 1740, Whitefield became a major figure in the First Great Awakening, riding from New York City to Charleston on horseback and preaching to crowds of thousands of people. While John Wesley denounced slavery, Whitefield advocated in favor of it, leading to its legalization in Georgia in 1751. He preached a total of 18,000 times to 10 million people, and he died in Newburyport, Massachusetts in 1770.