Donn Headley's Reviews > George Whitefield: America's Spiritual Founding Father

Thomas Kidd has assembled a vital biography of "perhaps...the greatest preacher the world has ever seen." Kidd's treatment is nothing less than comprehensive for a one-volume overview. Whitefield's tremendous popularity and impact, his adroit use of the contemporary media, and his consistent adherence to predestination and the necessity of the "new birth" in his preaching and writing are presented here in impressive detail. At the same time, the author courageously documents Whitefield's ambivalence toward slavery in the New World--never hesitating to reach out to Africans and African Americans (as well as American Indians), but also believing that the culturally inferior blacks would be best off remaining in slavery. Kidd also charts Whitefield's frequent disputes with the Methodists (especially John Wesley) and Moravians over key theological doctrines. This will be an essential biography for clarifying the great preacher's life and work for scholars into the twenty-first century and will do well in re-vivifying the legacy of George Whitefield.