Thomas S. Kidd
Research Professor of Church History
Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary

Specialties
Early America, American Religion
Education
Ph.D., University of Notre Dame, 2001
M.A., Clemson University
B.A., Clemson University
Research Interests
"My research interests are in eighteenth-century North America, particularly the history of evangelicalism." Kidd has written for media outlets including the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal, and he also blogs at “Evangelical History” at The Gospel Coalition website. In the classroom, Kidd teaches courses on colonial America, the American Revolution, and American religious history.
Selected Publications
- Thomas Jefferson: A Biography of Spirit and Flesh (Yale University Press, 2022)
- Who Is an Evangelical?: The History of a Movement in Crisis (Yale University Press, 2019)
- Benjamin Franklin: The Religious Life of a Founding Father (Yale University Press, 2017)
- American Colonial History: Clashing Cultures and Faiths (Yale University Press, 2016)
- Baptists in America: A History, with Barry Hankins (Oxford University Press, 2015)
- George Whitefield: America's Spiritual Founding Father (Yale University Press, 2014)
- Patrick Henry: First Among Patriots (Basic Books, 2011)
- God of Liberty: A Religious History of the American Revolution (Basic Books, 2010)
- American Christians and Islam: Evangelical Culture and Muslims from the Colonial Period to the Age of Terrorism (Princeton University Press, 2008)
- The Great Awakening: The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America (Yale University Press, 2007)
- The Great Awakening: A Brief History with Documents (Bedford Books, 2007)
- The Protestant Interest: New England after Puritanism (Yale University Press, 2004)
- 'The Healing of Mercy Wheeler: Illness and Miracles among Early American Evangelicals,' William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 63, no. 1 (Jan. 2006), 149-70.
- 'Passing as a Pastor: Clerical Imposture in the Colonial Atlantic World,' Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation, 14, no. 2 (Summer 2004): 149-74.
- "Is It Worse to Follow Mahomet than the Devil?': Early American Uses of Islam,' Church History 72, no. 4 (Dec. 2003): 766-90.
- "Let Hell and Rome Do Their Worst': World News, the Catholic Threat, and International Protestantism in Provincial Boston,' The New England Quarterly, 76, no. 2 (June 2003): 265-90.