Happy 300th Birthday George Whitefield!

I've spent the last year writing and talking about Whitefield in various places, from Cape Town to Carlisle, from Athens to America. So I thought this would be a good time to share some of those things here, to aid your celebrations.

First up, read the man himself: The Sermons of George Whitefield in a new, two-volume set with annotations and a historical-theological introduction:

USA style

British original

Last week, the 2014 St Antholin's Lecture was on Whitefield, Toplady, Simeon, and Wesley's Arminian Campaigns. It was called "Strangely Warmed", or perhaps an alternative title might be "Celebrity pastors in Calvinist cover-ups." The audio has just been made available here

THE Southern Baptist Theological Journal also did an issue on him

Obviously, we can't get a Ref21 post go by without mentioning the celebrity historian Dr Carl Trueman, who also got in on the act by lecturing on Whitefield here. Carl, George, and myself all went to school in Gloucester. Though I was at the comprehensive school.

And if, as well as Whitefield's sermons, above, you want to read something (or get something for Christmas) on the great man (Whitefield, not Trueman...), you could do a lot worse than the brand new blockbuster by Thomas Kidd.

So, happy birthday George. Thanks for being a great confessional Anglican, and thinking the 39 Articles were cool. Thanks for being into covenant theology before that became a naughty thing to talk about in the UK. Thanks for repenting of being too rash and hasty in your attitude towards certain American presbyterians, and repenting of your "too apostolical" way of speaking and judging people when you were in your 20s. Thanks for showing that one really can believe in predestination and limited atonement at the same time as being a barnstormer of an evangelist. And thanks for winning many people for Christ.