page_title: George Whitefield
section_title: Clergy versus Whitefield
hierarchical_section_title: George Whitefield / Opposition and controversy / Clergy versus Whitefield
caption_attribution_description: English: George Whitefield Artist James Moore, 18th Century Copy after M. Jenkin Sitter George Whitefield, 1714? - 1770 Date after 1751 Type Print Medium Mezzotint on paper Dimensions Image: 31 x 25.1cm (12 3/16 x 9 7/8") Sheet: 35.4 x 25.2cm (13 15/16 x 9 15/16") Credit Line National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution Object number NPG.69.77 Data Source National Portrait Gallery See more items in National Portrait Gallery Collection
context_page_description: George Whitefield, also spelled Whitfield, was an English Anglican cleric and evangelist who was one of the founders of Methodism and the evangelical movement.
  Born in Gloucester, he matriculated at Pembroke College at the University of Oxford in 1732. There he joined the "Holy Club" and was introduced to the Wesley brothers, John and Charles, with whom he would work closely in his later ministry. Whitefield was ordained after receiving his Bachelor of Arts degree. He immediately began preaching, but he did not settle as the minister of any parish. Rather he became an itinerant preacher and evangelist. In 1740, Whitefield traveled to North America, where he preached a series of revivals that became part of the "Great Awakening". His methods were controversial and he engaged in numerous debates and disputes with other clergymen.
  Whitefield received widespread recognition during his ministry; he preached at least 18,000 times to perhaps 10 million listeners in Great Britain and the American colonies. Whitefield could enthrall large audiences through a potent combination of drama, religious rhetoric, and imperial pride.
context_section_description: English, Scottish, and American clergy attacked Whitefield, often in response to his attacks on them and Anglicanism, as documented in this section. Early in his career, Whitefield criticized the Church of England. In response, clergy called Whitefield one of "the young quacks in divinity" who are "breaking the peace and unity" of the church.
  From 1738 to 1741, Whitefield issued seven Journals. A sermon in St Paul's Cathedral depicted them as "a medley of vanity, and nonsense, and blasphemy jumbled together". Joseph Trapp called the Journals "blasphemous" and accused Whitefield of being "besotted either with pride or madness".
  In England, by 1738 when he was ordained priest, Whitefield wrote that "the spirit of the clergy began to be much embittered" and that "churches were gradually denied me". In response to Whitefield's Journals, the bishop of London, Edmund Gibson, published a 1739 pastoral letter criticizing Whitefield. Whitefield responded by labeling Anglican clerics as "lazy, non-spiritual, and pleasure seeking". He rejected ecclesiastical authority claiming that 'the whole world is now my parish'.
  In 1740, Whitefield had attacked John Tillotson and Richard Allestree's The Whole Duty of Man. These attacks
  resulted in hostile responses and reduced attendance at his London open-air preaching.
  In 1741, Whitefield made his first visit to Scotland at the invitation of "Ralph and Ebenezer Erskine, leaders of the breakaway Associate Presbytery. When they demanded and Whitefield refused that he preach only in their churches, they attacked him as a " sorcerer" and a "vain-glorious, self-seeking, puffed-up creature".  In addition, Whitefield's collecting money for his Bethesda orphanage, combined with the hysteria evoked by his open-air sermons, resulted in bitter attacks in Edinburgh and Glasgow. 
  Whitefield's itinerant preaching throughout the colonies was opposed by Bishop Benson who had ordained him for a settled ministry in Georgia. Whitefield replied that if bishops did not authorize his itinerant preaching, God would give him the authority.
  In 1740, Jonathan Edwards invited Whitefield to preach in his church in Northampton. Edwards was "deeply disturbed by his unqualified appeals to emotion, his openly judging those he considered unconverted, and his demand for instant conversions". Whitefield refused to discuss Edwards' misgivings with him. Later, Edwards delivered a series of sermons containing but "thinly veiled critiques" of Whitefield's preaching, "warning against over-dependence upon a preacher's eloquence and fervency".
  During Whitefield's 1744–1748 visit to America, ten critical pamphlets were published, two by officials of Harvard and Yale. This criticism was in part evoked by Whitefield's criticism of "their education and Christian commitment" in his Journal of 1741. Whitefield saw this opposition as "a conspiracy" against him.
  After Whitefield preached at St. Philip's, Charleston, the Commissary, Alexander Garden suspended him as a "vagabond clergyman."
caption: Mezzotint of Whitefield after James Moore, after 1751
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