Synopses & Reviews
In the mid-eighteenth century, Americans experienced an outbreak of religious revivals that shook colonial society. This book provides a definitive view of these revivals, now known as the First Great Awakening, and their dramatic effects on American culture. Historian Thomas S. Kidd tells the absorbing story of early American evangelical Christianity through the lives of seminal figures like Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield as well as many previously unknown preachers, prophets, and penitents.
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The Great Awakening helped create the evangelical movement, which heavily emphasized the individualand#8217;s experience of salvation and the Holy Spiritand#8217;s work in revivals. By giving many evangelicals radical notions of the spiritual equality of all people, the revivals helped breed the democratic style that would come to characterize the American republic. Kidd carefully separates the positions of moderate supporters of the revivals from those of radical supporters, and he delineates the objections of those who completely deplored the revivals and their wildly egalitarian consequences. The battles among these three camps, the author shows, transformed colonial America and ultimately defined the nature of the evangelical movement.
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Review
"An important and impressive piece of scholarship and is bound to become the first point of reference for a generation of students at all levels who are seeking to make some sense of an intriguing cast of characters and set of events."and#8212;Linford D. Fisher, New England Quarterly
Review
"Well researched, clearly written and authoritatively argued. There is no book of comparable breadth, either chronologically or geographically."and#8212;Mark Noll, University of Notre Dame
Review
and#8220;It has been fifty years since Edwin Gaustad told the history of New Englandand#8217;s Great Awakening, and, since then, the revivals themselves have at times been almost lost sight of in debates about the fictions of memory and the invention of tradition.andnbsp;Thomas Kiddand#8217;s narrative, returning squarely to the formative events and factions that shaped early evangelicalism, offers a valuable synoptic account of the beginnings of this continuously important movement.and#8221;and#8212;Leigh E. Schmidt, Princeton University
Review
and#8220;An informed and much-needed synthesis of the events that comprise the and#8216;Great Awakening.and#8217; Judiciously describes evangelical efforts from Nova Scotia to Georgia over the entire eighteenth century and demonstrates the centrality of these revivals to an understanding of the American mind. Kiddand#8217;s book will become the standard introduction to its subject.and#8221;and#8212;Philip F. Gura, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Review
and#8220;Despite the prodigious attention to the and#8216;Great Awakeningand#8217; in eighteenth-century America, there has been, amazingly, no modern comprehensive account that looks at all regions from Nova Scotia to Georgia.andnbsp;The result is a highly fragmented series of vignettes and biographies with no overarching narrative. That void has now been more than filled by Thomas Kidd's masterful analysis of the eighteenth-century revivals and the and#8216;evangelicaland#8217; movement they spawned.andnbsp; Thoroughly researched and beautifully written, this book is must reading not only for early American historians, but for anyone concerned to understand the origins of modern evangelicalism.and#8221;and#8212;Harry S. Stout, Yale University
Review
"This monograph sheds important light on the origins of evangelicalism in the US. . . . Recommended."and#8212;Choice
Review
and#8220;With this deeply researched and beautifully focused study of the origins of American evangelicalism, Thomas Kidd gives us nothing less than a fresh, post-revisionist understanding of the Great Awakening. But that is not all. By casting a powerful light upon the controversies at the outset of the evangelical movement, particularly those revolving around the third person of the Trinity, he illuminates the rest of that movementand#8217;s conflicted history, providing insight into its enduring complexities, and its likely manifestations in the century ahead.and#8221;and#8212;Wilfred McClay, author of
The Masterless: Self and Society in Modern Americaandnbsp;
Review
". . . a book to end all books on the Great Awakening, substituting a powerful new force in American Christianity: evangelicalism. . . . [A] probing and persuasive book. . . . Throughout this fine book, the reader has not been cheated in any way, only richly rewarded."and#8212;Edwin S. Gaustad, Catholic Historical Review
Review
"A compelling, clear narrative. . . . He succeeds dramatically."—Caleb Maskell. Journal of Religion Edwin S. Gaustad - Catholic Historical Review
About the Author
Thomas S. Kidd is associate professor of history, Baylor University, and author of The Protestant Interest: New England after Puritanism, published by Yale University Press. He lives in Woodway, TX.