Life and setting
Whitefield preached to enormous outdoor crowds across Britain and the American colonies and became one of the most recognizable voices of the Great Awakening.
Great Awakening • Evangelical Anglican / Methodist movement
George Whitefield
1714 – 1770 • Itinerant evangelist
Why this person matters
His transatlantic itinerancy helped create a shared evangelical public culture before the American Revolution.
What should not be sanitized
Whitefield owned enslaved people and actively supported the legalization of slavery in Georgia, a serious part of his legacy.