Read e-book online Inventing George Whitefield: Race, Revivalism, and the PDF

Evangelicals and students of spiritual background have lengthy famous George Whitefield (1714�1770) as a founder of American evangelicalism. yet Jessica M. Parr argues he used to be even more than that. He used to be an significantly influential determine in Anglo-American non secular tradition, and his expansive missionary profession may be understood in a number of methods. Whitefield begun as an Anglican clergyman. Many within the Church of britain perceived him as an intensive. within the American South, Whitefield struggled to reconcile his disdain for the planter type along with his trust that slavery used to be an fiscal necessity. Whitefield was once attracted to an idealized Puritan earlier that used to be all yet passed by the time of his first stopover at to New England in 1740.

Parr attracts from Whitefield�s writing and sermons and from newspapers, pamphlets, and different resources to appreciate Whitefield�s occupation and instances. She deals new insights into revivalism, print tradition, transatlantic cultural affects, and the connection among spiritual inspiration and slavery. Whitefield turned a spiritual icon formed within the complexities of revivalism, the competition over spiritual toleration, and the conflicting function of Christianity for enslaved humans. Proslavery Christians used Christianity as a kind of social regulate for slaves, while evangelical Christianity�s emphasis on �freedom within the eyes of God� prompt a route to political freedom. Parr finds how Whitefield�s dying marked the beginning of a fancy legacy that during some ways rendered him extra robust and influential after his dying than in the course of his lengthy career.