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Leaders in Action
Forgotten Founding Father: The Heroic Legacy of George Whitefield
For many of those who are even familiar with his name, George Whitefield is thought of as a preacher, a man connected with the Great Awakening in the 1700s. While this is true, it is only part of the story. As a student at Oxford University, he experienced a spiritual awakening under the influence of John Wesley's Methodists and immediately began tending to prisoners, caring for the poor, and preaching the Christian gospel. He met with astounding success, in time speaking to larger crowds than had ever gathered in the history of England. Whitefield became the most famous man of his age. His impact upon the American colonies, however, may have been his most lasting gift. In seven tours of the colonies, Whitfield preached from Georgia to Maine, calling the colonists to spiritual conversion and challenging them in their sense of national destiny. He befriended men like Benjamin Franklin, converted men like Patrick Henry, and inspired men like George Washington. Furthermore, when he learned that England intended to tighten her control over the colonies, Whitefield warmed his American friends in sermon after sermon and even accompanied Benjamin Franklin to make the American case in the Court of Saint James. Many of the colonists considered him the father of their revolution. Forgotten Founding Father captures the early struggles and international successes of this amazing leader. The result is a portrait of a gifted but flawed human who yielded himself as a tool in the hands of a sovereign God. Also portrayed is how important Whitfield was to the American cause and how much Americans today owe to him -- a story that will inspire a new generation with a past vividly and truthfully retold.
320 pages, Hardcover
First published April 30, 2001
7 people are currently reading
142 people want to read
About the author
Stephen Mansfield
96 books158 followersStephen Mansfield is a New York Times bestselling author and a popular speaker who is becoming one of the nation’s most respected voices on religion and American culture. He is also an activist in a variety of social causes.
Stephen was born in Georgia but grew up largely in Europe due to his father’s career as an officer in the United States Army. After a youth filled with sports, travel, and mischief, he was recruited to play college football but turned down the opportunity when a Christian conversion moved him to attend a leading Christian college.
He earned a Bachelor’s degree in history and philosophy and then moved to Texas where he pastored a church, completed two Master’s degrees, hosted a radio show and began acquiring a reputation as a popular speaker of both depth and humor. He moved to Tennessee in 1991 where he again pastored a church, did relief work among the Kurds in Northern Iraq, served as a political consultant, and completed a doctorate.
It was during this time that he also launched the writing career for which he has become internationally known. His first book on Winston Churchill was a Gold Medallion Award Finalist. He also wrote widely-acclaimed biographies of Booker T. Washington and George Whitefield as well as a number of other books on history and leadership. In 1997, the Governor of Tennessee commissioned Mansfield to write the official history of religion in Tennessee for that state’s bicentennial.
In 2002, Stephen left the pastorate after twenty fruitful years to write and lecture full-time. Not long afterward he wrote The Faith of George W. Bush, which spent many weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and won numerous national awards. The book also became a source for Oliver Stone’s internationally acclaimed film W, which chronicled Bush’s rise to the presidency.
This international bestseller led to a string of influential books over the following eight years. Stephen wrote The Faith of the American Soldier after being embedded with U.S. troops in Iraq. He also wrote about the new Pope in Benedict XVI: His Life and Mission. His book The Faith of Barack Obama was another international bestseller and was often a topic in major media during the presidential campaign of 2008. To answer the crumbling values of portions of corporate America, he wrote The Search for God and Guinness and soon found himself speaking to corporate gatherings around the world.
Stephen continues to write books about faith and culture—recently on topics like Sarah Palin, Oprah Winfrey and America’s generals—but beyond his writing career he has founded The Mansfield Group, a successful consulting and communications firm, as well as Chartwell Literary Group, a firm that creates and manages literary projects. Together with his wife, Beverly, Mansfield has created The Global Leadership Development Fund, a foundation that sponsors leadership training and networking around the world.
In recent years, Stephen’s popularity as a speaker has nearly eclipsed his reputation as a bestselling author. He is often to be found addressing a university gathering, a corporate retreat or a fundraising banquet and stirring his audience with the humor and storytelling that have become his trademark.
Mansfield lives primarily in Nashville, Tennessee, with his beloved wife, Beverly, who is an award-winning songwriter and producer. For more information, log onto MansfieldGroup.com.
Stephen was born in Georgia but grew up largely in Europe due to his father’s career as an officer in the United States Army. After a youth filled with sports, travel, and mischief, he was recruited to play college football but turned down the opportunity when a Christian conversion moved him to attend a leading Christian college.
He earned a Bachelor’s degree in history and philosophy and then moved to Texas where he pastored a church, completed two Master’s degrees, hosted a radio show and began acquiring a reputation as a popular speaker of both depth and humor. He moved to Tennessee in 1991 where he again pastored a church, did relief work among the Kurds in Northern Iraq, served as a political consultant, and completed a doctorate.
It was during this time that he also launched the writing career for which he has become internationally known. His first book on Winston Churchill was a Gold Medallion Award Finalist. He also wrote widely-acclaimed biographies of Booker T. Washington and George Whitefield as well as a number of other books on history and leadership. In 1997, the Governor of Tennessee commissioned Mansfield to write the official history of religion in Tennessee for that state’s bicentennial.
In 2002, Stephen left the pastorate after twenty fruitful years to write and lecture full-time. Not long afterward he wrote The Faith of George W. Bush, which spent many weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and won numerous national awards. The book also became a source for Oliver Stone’s internationally acclaimed film W, which chronicled Bush’s rise to the presidency.
This international bestseller led to a string of influential books over the following eight years. Stephen wrote The Faith of the American Soldier after being embedded with U.S. troops in Iraq. He also wrote about the new Pope in Benedict XVI: His Life and Mission. His book The Faith of Barack Obama was another international bestseller and was often a topic in major media during the presidential campaign of 2008. To answer the crumbling values of portions of corporate America, he wrote The Search for God and Guinness and soon found himself speaking to corporate gatherings around the world.
Stephen continues to write books about faith and culture—recently on topics like Sarah Palin, Oprah Winfrey and America’s generals—but beyond his writing career he has founded The Mansfield Group, a successful consulting and communications firm, as well as Chartwell Literary Group, a firm that creates and manages literary projects. Together with his wife, Beverly, Mansfield has created The Global Leadership Development Fund, a foundation that sponsors leadership training and networking around the world.
In recent years, Stephen’s popularity as a speaker has nearly eclipsed his reputation as a bestselling author. He is often to be found addressing a university gathering, a corporate retreat or a fundraising banquet and stirring his audience with the humor and storytelling that have become his trademark.
Mansfield lives primarily in Nashville, Tennessee, with his beloved wife, Beverly, who is an award-winning songwriter and producer. For more information, log onto MansfieldGroup.com.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
December 28, 2020
As a middling history buff of both the American and Anglican persuasion it is possible that I’ve skimmed over the name George Whitefield before and it never registered. For while his breadth and impact on American politics and pre-revolutionary incitement of colonists seems obvious from this telling, he was certainly forgotten to me if I had been cognizant of his life.
Anglican. Calvinist. Methodist. Revivalist. Evangelist. All of these terms are applicable to the man who was the creator of preaching in the fields, parks, and town spaces when the Anglicans denied him pulpits across England. While this accounting reads to me as over-romanticized, Whitefield was a vast traveler across England and America and made more cross-Atlantic trips in the 1700’s than most people I know today have in modern times. He was a voracious orator, reader, and writer, speaking multiple times each day and starting or influencing publishing companies to pump out mass amounts of theological pamphlets and books.
He modernized sermons to include colloquial stories, humor, and in-the-moment adaptations. From first hand accounts, he incidted crowds with his preaching that set aflame many and even influenced some (like Benjamin Franklin) who thought themselves beyond the influence of ministers due to their intellectual interpretation of theology. Where the author loses me a little is in the link to the birth of the U.S. national identity. Mansfield argues that Whitefield sowed the seeds of the revolution with his messages regarding foreboding future events and the need to unify and find purpose. I’m not sure I see the direct connection, but I have not reviewed his bibliographic sources enough to know for certain. The argument built here was not enough to convince.
Like many of the other founding fathers, Whitefield is difficult to fully embrace with the vantage point of the modern morality. His marriage was a no attempt at partnership and rather sad attempt to marry based on his personal interpretation of biblical doctrine, from what is cited here. He was an ‘owner’ of enslaved people, and actually a proponent of making slavery legal in Georgia so that he could more readily afford to financially support his project there. Although it is not unusual for the founding fathers to own enslaved people, as a minister and someone who preached that enslaved people had souls and needed saving, the hypocrisy seems even sharper than for other colonial leaders.
To me, one of the arguments for his greatness is the story of the revolutionary soldiers in Massachusetts looting his burial site to collect relics. “Someone pulled out a knife and gently cut off a piece of the collar or the cuffs that had survived the years. Others did as well. The sexton just watched, unable to deny them. The soldiers took the pieces of the preacher’s garment and shared them among themselves. They tucked them in their boots or sewed them in their coasts or put them in the lining of their hats.” People took relics from saints. They took relics of significant holy people they felt would protect them from the uncertain world in which they traversed real danger. However, even this telling seems sanitized to me. Perhaps it is not, perhaps bits of rotten cloth is all they took. But history would usually have relic-seekers taking small bones – fingers, wrists, and feet – that were easy to tuck into personal clothing and keep near. Either way, it is clear that the reverence the people had for him, even after his death, was significant. His impact was large, even if he was mostly forgotten by history.
Anglican. Calvinist. Methodist. Revivalist. Evangelist. All of these terms are applicable to the man who was the creator of preaching in the fields, parks, and town spaces when the Anglicans denied him pulpits across England. While this accounting reads to me as over-romanticized, Whitefield was a vast traveler across England and America and made more cross-Atlantic trips in the 1700’s than most people I know today have in modern times. He was a voracious orator, reader, and writer, speaking multiple times each day and starting or influencing publishing companies to pump out mass amounts of theological pamphlets and books.
He modernized sermons to include colloquial stories, humor, and in-the-moment adaptations. From first hand accounts, he incidted crowds with his preaching that set aflame many and even influenced some (like Benjamin Franklin) who thought themselves beyond the influence of ministers due to their intellectual interpretation of theology. Where the author loses me a little is in the link to the birth of the U.S. national identity. Mansfield argues that Whitefield sowed the seeds of the revolution with his messages regarding foreboding future events and the need to unify and find purpose. I’m not sure I see the direct connection, but I have not reviewed his bibliographic sources enough to know for certain. The argument built here was not enough to convince.
Like many of the other founding fathers, Whitefield is difficult to fully embrace with the vantage point of the modern morality. His marriage was a no attempt at partnership and rather sad attempt to marry based on his personal interpretation of biblical doctrine, from what is cited here. He was an ‘owner’ of enslaved people, and actually a proponent of making slavery legal in Georgia so that he could more readily afford to financially support his project there. Although it is not unusual for the founding fathers to own enslaved people, as a minister and someone who preached that enslaved people had souls and needed saving, the hypocrisy seems even sharper than for other colonial leaders.
To me, one of the arguments for his greatness is the story of the revolutionary soldiers in Massachusetts looting his burial site to collect relics. “Someone pulled out a knife and gently cut off a piece of the collar or the cuffs that had survived the years. Others did as well. The sexton just watched, unable to deny them. The soldiers took the pieces of the preacher’s garment and shared them among themselves. They tucked them in their boots or sewed them in their coasts or put them in the lining of their hats.” People took relics from saints. They took relics of significant holy people they felt would protect them from the uncertain world in which they traversed real danger. However, even this telling seems sanitized to me. Perhaps it is not, perhaps bits of rotten cloth is all they took. But history would usually have relic-seekers taking small bones – fingers, wrists, and feet – that were easy to tuck into personal clothing and keep near. Either way, it is clear that the reverence the people had for him, even after his death, was significant. His impact was large, even if he was mostly forgotten by history.
October 19, 2010
Reading this book made me feel bad that I had been an American Studies major in college and never heard of George Whitefield. He was an amazing man. But my problem with this book lies with the author. You can tell he practically worships Whitefield so his writing was rather biased in my opinion. I didn't feel like he proved the title of his book. Was Whitefield an actual founding father of America? I wouldn't got that far but I would say he did bring much needed religious preaching to the Colonists in America.
April 22, 2010
If you are spiritually dry, and need an uplifting book that is not 600 pages this is it. I was so motivated after reading this, Whitefield is one of my heroes of the faith, a giant along with Luther and Calvin. This may sit on the nightstand forever as a constant reminder of how God uses those who seek him fervently.
November 19, 2007
I love how this book tells about Whitefield's life in an interesting way. It's not dry at all, rather, it's very intriguing.
In this book, you learn about George Whitefield's earlier years of searching for righteousness through "self-mortification", in other words, through extensive fasting, sitting in the snow for hours, intentionally failing in school to humiliate himself and reduce his pride.
But George Whitefield's self-discipline never drew him closer to God, but through the reading of God's Word and other religious works, George came to terms with His Creator, and surrendered his life to Christ. George Whitefield goes on to be an extremely popular, and effective evangelist and preacher.
"Forgotten Founding Father" by Stephen Mansfield is truly an amazing story, and I highly recommend it!
In this book, you learn about George Whitefield's earlier years of searching for righteousness through "self-mortification", in other words, through extensive fasting, sitting in the snow for hours, intentionally failing in school to humiliate himself and reduce his pride.
But George Whitefield's self-discipline never drew him closer to God, but through the reading of God's Word and other religious works, George came to terms with His Creator, and surrendered his life to Christ. George Whitefield goes on to be an extremely popular, and effective evangelist and preacher.
"Forgotten Founding Father" by Stephen Mansfield is truly an amazing story, and I highly recommend it!
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews