My most recent book is Patrick Henry: First among Patriots (Basic Books, 2011). I have also published God of Liberty: A Religious History of the American Revolution (Basic Books, 2010). My first book, The Protestant Interest: New England after Puritanism, was published by Yale University Press in 2004. Yale also published The Great Awakening: The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America in 2007. I won a 2006-07 NEH Fellowship to support The Great Awakening.

My document reader The Great Awakening: A Brief History with Documents was published by Bedford Books in 2007. American Christians and Islam (Princeton University Press) was published in 2008.

I am currently writing a biography of George Whitefield, due out in fall 2014 with Yale University Press.

I have published articles in The William and Mary Quarterly, The New England Quarterly, Church History, and Religion and American Culture. I won a 2010 Baylor University Outstanding Professor Award,was selected for the 2004-05 Young Scholars in American Religion program, and won a 2004 NEH Summer Stipend.

I received a B.A. and M.A. at Clemson University. I came to Baylor University in 2002 after completing a Ph.D. in history at the University of Notre Dame, where I worked with George Marsden. My wife Ruby and I have two sons, Jonathan and Joshua.