A Cautionary Story
No doubt, some of the troubling elements of Whitefield’s legacy was his involvement with slavery—some of the ubiquitous options of life within the eighteenth century British world. At first, Whitefield was controversial for the way in which he referred to as out Southern slave house owners for his or her terrible therapy of slaves. However it wasn’t too lengthy earlier than Whitefield made the fateful determination to change into a slave grasp himself.
George Whitefield devoted his life to instructing the Scriptures and calling folks to know and love God. This biography explores the lifetime of Whitefield as a distinguished determine within the early evangelical revival in an trustworthy, historic, and balanced means.
Not like a lot of his contemporaries, Whitefield noticed slaves as folks created within the picture of God, and he urged slaves to expertise the brand new start and non secular liberation. However in a failure of biblical love and justice, that by no means translated into Whitefield advocating for his or her bodily emancipation.
When it got here to slavery, Whitefield was undoubtedly a product of his personal time and place. He was influenced by his context with out being inevitably decided by it. His failures—much more seen with the good thing about three centuries’ price of hindsight—function a cautionary story of the risks of complicity with our tradition’s fallenness. In addition they drive us to ask, Are there planks in our personal non secular eyes that threaten to impair the readability of our personal ethical imaginative and prescient?
Ian Maddock is coauthor with Tom Schwanda of Whitefield on the Christian Life: New Start to Get pleasure from God.
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