George Whitefield and the Emergence of Evangelical Devotion

True spirituality was described by the Wesley brothers as being like a fire from heaven, and the most fiery of preachers was George Whitefield. Examining his manuscript diaries, this chapter traces Whitefield’s early formation as a case study of the making of evangelical devotion. The key influences on Whitefield were the discipline of Oxford Methodism, the fearless enterprising spirit of Pietism, and the practical biblical emphases of Puritan-Nonconformist writers. These elements were fused together in the heat of experience as Whitefield discovered a new appreciation for the indwelling Holy Spirit as “the life of God in the soul of man.” After his conversion, he emerged as a force that ignited revival far and wide, and his letters and sermons display a taut dialectic of self-exertion and self-abasement, as his private spirituality was turned inside out in a public ministry of remarkable zeal.