A life of great hero of Protestant church is being reintroduced in a new creative way. This is amazing book for everyone who wants to understand the essence of Christian mission. And most importantly, that the message of it is propositional. It is not to be imposed by institutions but rather one needs to be invited to it by the word and example of the person who preaches. George Whitfield was such a preacher. This is well researched and well thought book.

I wanted ( badly) to enjoy this book about George Whitefield. I just wasn’t drawn in. The book is well written so the problem was likely in my short attention span.

George Whitefield: Evangelist for God and Empire by Peter Y. Choi brings out a side of George Whitefield that you probably have not heard about before. I've heard about Whitefield's preaching before, about how he was a huge force between the revivals during the Great Awakening, and I've also heard about how he was something of an influence to the Founding Fathers, but this book tells us that there was so much more to him.

This book talks about Whitefield's involvement in building an orphanage, his influence during the French and Indian War, and about his influence on slavery in the colony of Georgia. It paints him as a real human being, with flaws and all, rather than the larger-than-life preacher figure that many people make him out to be today.

It has a fairly scholarly tone, and is probably not something that you'll be able to sit down to and read in one sitting, but if you're looking to learn more on what George Whitefield was really like, this is a good place to start.

Any book on George Whitefield is not a waste of time. I love reading about pastors of old and how they went about presenting Jesus to their environment. I am inspired and encouraged because of books like this. If you want to simply sit down and get to know Mr. Whitefield in an easy fashion, then this is the book for you. Thank you.

Coming from a Methodist background, I have often found myself intrigued by the relationship between John Wesley and George Whitfield. Later in their friendship ...

Although George Whitefield disagreed with John Wesley on some theological matters, he was careful not to create problems in public that could be used to hinder the preaching of the gospel. When someone asked Whitefield if he thought he would see Wesley in heaven, Whitefield replied, “I fear not, for he will be so near the eternal throne and we at such a distance, we shall hardly get sight of him.” [Wycliffe Handbook of Preaching and Preachers, W. Wiersbe, Moody Press, 1984, p. 255. Quoted in Galaxie Software. (2002). 10,000 Sermon Illustrations. Biblical Studies Press]

Though this biography touches on the relationship between the Wesleys and George Whitfield, its major focus is on Whitfield’s work of spreading the gospel in England and America and his contribution toward bringing English culture to the New World.

The work is scholarly and primarily aimed at that audience. The general reader will be less satisfied with the work, though some might be surprised. The book is readable and will be satisfying to many with an interest in English and American history or church history in general.

The author does an excellent job of preparing the reader for what is coming — both in terms of the book and in terms the book’s chapters and smaller divisions. This makes much of what follows easy to appreciate and understand.
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This review is based on a free electronic copy provided by the publisher for the purpose of creating this review. The opinions are mine alone.

The triumvirate of the early days of Evangelicalism has been Jonathan Edwards, John Wesly and George Whitefield. Of the three Whitefield has been the least written about as this graph shows (the data is from a detest taken from mentions in google books):


Interactive version here

D. M. Lloyd-Jones regarded Whitefield as 'the most neglected man in the whole of church history. The ignorance concerning him is appalling.' However, more recently there have been a number of books written on Whitefield. These include: Harry Stout's Divine Dramatist (1991); Arnold Dallimore's full two volume biography (1970, 1980) and his one volume published by Crossway (2010); Frank Lambert’s Pedlar in Divinity (2002); John Pollock's George Whitefield (2009); Jerome Dean Maffety’s The Accidental Revolutionary (2011); Thomas Kidd’s George Whitefield: America’s Spiritual Founding Father (2014), who sees Whitefield as a 'creative religious entrepreneur'; and the excellent George Whitefield: Life, Context and Legacy edited by Geordan Hammond and David Ceri Jones (2016). And now we have this offering from Peter Choi, who was one of the contributors to the aforementioned edited volume.

This book is the fruit of Choi's PhD dissertation under Mark Noll, who authored the foreword. Choi takes a fresh perspective on Whitefield and sees him in his cultural and political context. He summarises the central focus of his book as: ‘The relationship between George Whitefield’s religious and imperial agendas’.

He primarily focuses his work on Whitefield's later ministry and on his time in Georgia. This enables Choi to develop a broader picture of Whitefield as more than an itinerant revivalist preacher. He rightly observes:
‘Although historians have never treated the last half of Whitefield’s public life as thoroughly as the first half, pursuing his importance for religion in the Atlantic world as a whole will show those latter years were just as important as the former’ (128).
Choi shows how Whitefield's concerns broadened out into social, economic and political areas:

‘For all of his early energy advocating the new birth, Whitefield’s later years witnessed much less attention to regeneration in his public ministry’(100).

These broader concerns were epitomised in his desire to turn the Bethesda orphanage, which he built in 1740 near Savannah, Georgia, into a college. Sadly, this ambition was unfulfilled.

Choi presents us with a picture of Whitfield that goes beyond the revivalist preacher and grand itinerant, whose parish was the world. Whitefield’s concerns took on a broader perspective after the ‘Great Awakening’, they took on cultural and imperial aspects. Whitfield was more than a religious leader (14). According to Choi, it would have been accurate for Whitfield to declare ‘the empire is my parish’! (102).

Choi identifies much of the work that Whitfield did ‘was an agent of British culture who used his potent mix of political savvy and theological creativity to champion the cause of imperial expansion’ (3). His desire to see Georgia develop sadly led him to the acceptance and even advocacy of slavery:
‘He recoiled at the horrors of slavery but also recognized the necessity of slave labor for the colonial cause in the South and even pointed out the possibility of redeeming virtues’ (146).
He saw the economic and cultural development of Georgia as being dependent on the need for a large labour force, which slaves could provide.

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The development of Bethesda orphanage into a college was to be the pinnacle of his career. For many, it is perhaps surprising that he wanted a college rather than a church. In particular, the reasons for the development of a college were also much broader than to provide a church or missionary workforce.

‘Bethesda was nothing less than a test site for the limits of imperial expansion and coercion. Significantly for evangelical religion, Bethesda also represented an effort to harness the revival spirit in an ongoing institutional form’ (218).

In his applications for the development of the college he focused on the economic, cultural and empire-wide benefits it would bring to the area; ‘he argued that a college in Georgia would help build the region’s cultural base’ (211).

In examining the latter part of Whitfield’s career and focusing on his work in Georgia Choi has shown us a much broader, and more complex, picture of Whitefield than has been portrayed in many of the popular biographies.