George Whitefield, the Great Dissenter

This new biography recalls George Whitefield, the 18th-century English evangelist, as probably the most recognizable celebrity of his age. He was certainly the most traveled, crisscrossing the Atlantic countless times and preaching to audiences, sometimes in the tens of thousands, up and down the Atlantic seaboard and throughout the British Isles at a time when the total population of Great Britain and its colonies was only in the several millions.

Powerfully converted when he was a very young man as part of the early Methodist revivals, Whitefield was a founder of the evangelical movement that persists today. He popularized outdoor evangelistic preaching, skillfully employed the media (including Philadelphia printer Benjamin Franklin) to publicize his works, and exploited his celebrity to make his theme of “new birth” in Christ socially acceptable among all classes.