George Whitefield and Experimental Religion

One of the most popular preachers of his time, George Whitefield is less remembered today than his contemporaries Jonathan Edwards and John Wesley. While the latter’s commitment to experimental religion has been well documented, Whitefield’s understanding of the notion has not. In this article, I examine Whitefield’s use of the concept of experimental knowledge, and I trace how this concept mediates other distinctives of Whitefield’s Calvinist Methodism. I argue that while Whitefield shares a partial understanding of experimental religion with Wesley, Whitefield nonetheless espouses a distinctive view tailored to his Calvinism.