Thomas S. Kidd, Professor of History
Senior Fellow, Institute for Studies of Religion
Baylor University
One Bear Place #97306
Waco, TX 76798
Degrees
University of Notre Dame, Ph.D. in History (2001)
Clemson University, M.A. in History (1996)
Clemson University, B.A. in Political Science (1994)
Honors
Keynote speaker, Emory and Henry College commencement, May 2012.
Baylor University Outstanding Professor Award, 2010.
Won Summer Stipend Grants from the Louisville Institute, 2006 and 2008.
Named a “Top Young Historian” by the History News Network, 2007: Top Young Historians–HNN
Won a 2006-07 National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, supporting book The Great Awakening: The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America.
Baylor University Graduate Student Association Outstanding Professor Award, 2006.
Won a 2006-08 Council for Christian Colleges & Universities Initiative Grant to Network Christian Scholars (awarded to a group of four scholars studying western Christian views of the Middle East and Islam).
Baylor University 2004-05 Faculty Member of the Year, Baylor University Student Government.
Won a 2004 National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend.
Selected for the Young Scholars in American Religion Program, class of 2004-05, sponsored by the Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture, Indiana University-Purdue University-Indianapolis.
Publishing
A. Books
- Patrick Henry: First Among Patriots [Basic Books, 2011]
- God of Liberty: A Religious History of the American Revolution [Basic Books, 2010]
Mark Noll, author of America’s God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln, on God of Liberty
“This deeply researched, clearly organized, and well written book illuminates a complex and often controversial history. The Revolutionary and Constitutional periods were neither “Christian” nor “godless” as these terms are used in modern polemics. Instead, patriots and leaders of the early United States united to support disestablishment and common principles about the need for virtue to insure republican freedoms, despite holding different personal beliefs. Thomas Kidd is a remarkably sure-footed guide through this treacherous historical terrain.”
- American Christians and Islam: Evangelical Culture and Muslims from the Colonial Period to the Age of Terrorism [Princeton University Press, available at amazon.com].
“This remarkable book should be studied over and over again by anyone willing to understand the ideological origins of America’s enduring clash with Islam.”–Anouar Majid, Reviews in American History
- The Great Awakening: The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America [Yale University Press, 2007, paperback 2009, available at amazon.com]. Won a 2008 Award of Merit from Christianity Today magazine.
“Not another book on the Great Awakening in American history! No. This is a book to end all books on the Great Awakening.”–Edwin Gaustad, Catholic Historical Review
- The Great Awakening: A Brief History with Documents [Bedford Books, 2007]. Available at amazon.com.
- The Protestant Interest: New England after Puritanism (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2004). Available at amazon.com.
B. Current book projects
- George Whitefield: A Biography [due out with Yale University Press fall 2014]
C. Selected Articles
“Daniel Rogers’s Egalitarian Great Awakening,” Journal of the Historical Society 7, no. 1 (March 2007): 111-135. [available here through Blackwell Synergy, subscription only]
“The Healing of Mercy Wheeler: Illness and Miracles among Early American Evangelicals,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 63, no. 1 (Jan. 2006): 149-170. [available here through the History Cooperative, subscription only]
“Passing as a Pastor: Clerical Imposture in the Colonial Atlantic World,” Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation, 14, no. 2 (Summer 2004): 149-174.
“‘Is It Worse to Follow Mahomet than the Devil?’: Early American Uses of Islam” Church History, 72, no. 4 (Dec. 2003): 766-90.
“‘Man is not Perfect or Essentially Good’: Finding Perry Miller and Reinhold Niebuhr’s Common Ground,” Christian Scholar’s Review, 33, no. 2 (Winter 2004): 197-211.
D. Book Chapters
“Jonathan Edwards and the Great Awakening,” in The Oxford Handbook of Early American Literature (Oxford University Press, 2008), 169-86.
“‘Do the Holy Scriptures Countenance Such Wild Disorder?’: Baptist Growth in the Eighteenth-Century American South,” in Ian M. Randall and Anthony R. Cross, eds., Baptists and Mission: Papers from the Fourth International Conference on Baptist Studies (Paternoster, 2007), 109-29.
“‘Becoming Important in the Eye of Civil Powers’: New Light Baptists, Cultural Respectability, and the Founding of the College of Rhode Island,” in Roger Ward and David Gushee, ed., The Scholarly Vocation and the Baptist Academy: Essays on the Future of Baptist Higher Education (Mercer University Press, 2008). Available at Amazon.com.
“Evangelicalism in New England from Mather to Edwards,” in Michael Haykin and Kenneth Stewart, ed., The Emergence of Evangelicalism: Exploring Historical Continuities (Inter-Varsity Press, 2008), 129-45. Available at Amazon.com.
“Patrick Henry,” in Gary L. Gregg II and Mark David Hall, eds., America’s Forgotten Founders (Butler Books, 2008), 119-29.
E. General Audience Publications [selected], I write regularly for a variety of outlets including WORLD magazine, Patheos.com, and USA Today.
“Southern Baptists Cleanse Past,” with Barry Hankins, USA Today, June 24, 2012.
“The Founders Wouldn’t Back Hastings College,” USA Today, April 21, 2010.
“Barack Obama: Secret Muslim?”, History News Network, Nov. 3, 2008.
Contested Origins of American Evangelical Christianity,” Historically Speaking 9, no. 1 (Sept./Oct. 2007): 2-4.
“Islam in American Protestant Thought,” in Books & Culture: A Christian Review, 12, no. 5 (Sept./Oct. 2006): 39-41. [See also Martin Marty’s comments on this article in “Muslim-Protestant Relations,” Sightings, 9/11/06.]
“Patrick Henry and The Contest for Religious Liberty in Revolutionary Virginia,” The 2011 Governor Henry Lecture, Richmond, Va.
“A Christian Sparta: Evangelicals, Deists, and the Creation of the American Republic,” Colonial Williamsburg, April 2009.
“American Christians and Islam,” Bush School of Government and Public Service, Texas A&M University, March 2009.
“The Great Awakening,” Nicholls State University, Thibodaux, La., Nov. 10, 2007.
“Islam in American Protestant Thought,” Gordon College, Wentham, Mass., October 3, 2005.
Teaching
Professor of History, Baylor University, (2012-)
Associate Professor of History, Baylor University (2007-2012)
Assistant Professor of History, Baylor University (2002-07)
Courses taught: Colonial America; Era of the American Revolution; American Religion; American Constitutional through the Civil War; U.S. South from Reconstruction to the Present; Civil War; America to 1877; Early American Awakenings; History of Global Evangelicalism