An International Tercentenary Conference at Pembroke College, Oxford - 25‑27 June 2014

2014 marks the tercentenary of the birth of George Whitefield (1714‑70), the eighteenth-century’s best known and most widely travelled evangelical revivalist. For a time in the middle decades of the eighteenth century, Whitefield was the most famous person in the Atlantic world. [...] However, that celebrity and reputation may have distorted later understandings of him. He became an evangelical or denominational hero to some and a villain to others. His writings and manuscript papers were subjected to over-enthusiastic editors who wished to celebrate his achievements, preserve his reputation, or popularize him, rather than to understand him in his eighteenth-century context. The tercentenary of Whitefield’s birth presents an opportunity for a major reassessment of his life and context.

Keynote Speakers:

• Andrew Atherstone (Wycliffe Hall, Oxford; on Whitefield’s ‘afterlife’)
• William Gibson (Oxford Brookes University; on Whitefield and the Church of England)
• David Ceri Jones (Aberystwyth University; on Whitefield and the evangelical revival)
• Frank Lambert (Purdue University; on Whitefield and the Enlightenment)
• Mark Noll (University of Notre Dame; on Whitefield’s spirituality)
• Carla Gardina Pestana (University of California, Los Angeles; on Whitefield and Empire)
• Boyd S. Schlenther (Emeritus Aberystwyth University; on Whitefield’s personal life)

Further details, the draft programme, and registration is available at http://www.mwrc.ac.uk/whitefield-conference/