This week “The Historians” podcast features an interview with Jessica Parr, author of Inventing George Whitefield: Race, Revivalism, and the Making of a Religious Icon (Mississippi, 2015). Whitefield was a founding father of American evangelicalism in the 1700s. Parr looks at his missionary career and his effort to reconcile his disdain for some plantation owners with his belief that slavery was an economic necessity in the American South. Listen at “The Historians” online archive here.
“The Historians” podcast is also heard each Monday at 11:30 am and Wednesday at 11 am on RISE, WMHT’s radio service for the blind and print disabled in New York’s Capital Region and Hudson Valley.
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George Whitefield sounds like a despicable person.
Taking the lead in a letter-writing campaign to PROMOTE enslavement of human beings is beyond horrid. As a self-declared religious leader, his actions were especially heinous. I think evangelicals should disown him rather than rush to embrace him as a revered part of their history.