e-mail+conversation+with+Dr.+Kidd

Greetings Dr. Kidd:

I graduated from Notre Dame's ACE program the same year that you received your PhD, and I have been reading your excellent Bedford publication on The Great Awakening with accompanying documents in hopes of teaching a unit to my AP history students here in Seoul, South Korea. I was wondering if you could either refer me to a concise source (preferably on‑line since library access is a problem here) or take a moment to chat with me at your convenience about the religious atmosphere in Colonial America leading up The Great Awakening. My textbook does not really address this outside of the traditional Puritan episodes of the Salem Witch Trials and Anne Hutchinson's exile, and unfortunately, this area is not my forte. If you were willing, I could even record our talk and convert it into a podcast which I could share with you and my students. Any help you can give me in this regard would be much appreciated, and thank you for this great publication.

Yours,

James Brightman

Dear James,

Thank you for your note, and I am very pleased to hear of your students learning about the Great Awakening.

A very nice online resource you might use is the Library of Congress's "Religion and the Founding of the American Republic." http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/religion/

You may have also noticed that I published a longer book on the Great Awakening with Yale University Press http://www.amazon.com/Great-Awakening-Evangelical-Christianity-Colonial/ dp/0300118872/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104‑9760527‑2611103?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=11 94009291&sr=1‑1 that goes into greater detail about the religious background in colonial America, among other subjects.

If you were still interested in interviewing me on religion prior to the Great Awakening, let me know the details of what you have in mind.

Best wishes, Tommy Kidd