The year 2014 marks the 300th anniversary of the birth of George Whitefield, one of the most remarkable preachers in the history of English-speaking Christianity. Educated at Oxford and a classmate of John and Charles Wesley, he became leading figure in the Great Awakening. He visited America seven times and preached over 18,000 sermons, many in the open air. His message of spiritual renewal and moral reform reached wide audiences and encouraged the revival work of William Tennent and the graduates of Tennent’s “Log College” in Neshaminy, Pennsylvania, the immediate predecessor of what would later become Princeton University and Princeton Theological Seminary. Whitefield’s close friend and admirer, Benjamin Franklin, founded what is today the University of Pennsylvania in a meetinghouse originally built in Philadelphia to hold the large crowds who came to hear Whitefield’s preaching there.

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