George Whitefield’s troubled relationship to race and slavery

2014 demonstrated that, whatever the significance of Barack Obama’s two terms as our first African American president, we have hardly moved beyond national struggles over race and class. Failures to indict white policemen accused of the unjust killings of black men precipitated protests and online shouting matches about racial inequality, or just how to talk about race. Christians participated in (hopefully) profitable discussions such as the December 16, 2014 “A Time to Speak” event, hosted by Pastor Bryan Lorritts of Fellowship Memphis at the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel.

In a notable coincidence, December 16 was also the 300th birthday of George Whitefield, the most important evangelist of the Great Awakening of the 18th century, and a thoroughly problematic figure on the topics of race and slavery. 

Whitefield grew up in Gloucester, England, and confronted the living reality of slavery when he began to visit America in the late 1730s. By 1740, the young Whitefield was not only drawing crowds in the tens of thousands to his outdoor sermons, but he was prepared to indict southern slave masters for their abuses of slaves in his published "Letter to the Inhabitants of Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina." Whitefield also demonstrated personal interest in African Americans who responded to his preaching, believing that they not only had an eternal fate, but that they could become serious (and educated) Christians.