Primary Sources on Revolution and Religion

A quick follow up to our interview with Thomas Kidd. He is also the editor and co-editor of some tremendous primary source collections on religion in the 18th century. He published one of those marvelous Bedford series books on the Great Awakening, which has 36 documents from a range of folks influenced by the Great Awakening, and more recently co-edited with Matthew L. Harris of Colorado State University-Pueblo a volume of documents on the Founding Fathers and their debates over religion during the revolutionary era. This second book is truly about “fathers” (all of the documents were written by men) and they focus on traditional “founders” – meaning white men. Similar to John Fea’s fantastic, award-nominated, fair and balanced book Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?, there seems to be a lack of attention to African Americans and Native Americans in these “Christian nation” debates, although many petitions from slaves in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania during the revolutionary era invoked God, Christ, and the notion of a Christian nation. Always more work to be done!

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