The Great Awakening: The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America (review)

In his recent synthesis of the Great Awakening, Thomas S. Kidd provides a densely-researched, panoramic account of the origins of evangelicalism in colonial British North America. Exploring the "long First Great Awakening" or the development and dissemination of an emotionally-intense, revival-centered evangelical style in the years between 1740 and 1783, Kidd's work ranges from Nova Scotia to Georgia with a special emphasis on New England (xix). Arguing that emotional "outpourings of the Holy Spirit" defined evangelicalism and characterized the long First Great Awakening from earlier periods of religious revival, Kidd uses the cultural radicalism of the revivals—manifested by ecstatic emotionalism, itinerancy, unrestrained clerical rhetoric, and eventual congregational separation from ecclesiastical establishments—as a trope for understanding religious and cultural divisions within evangelicalism (xiv). Instead of prototypically pitting Old Lights against New Lights, Kidd's work weaves a more nuanced tale of moderate evangelicals—those who approved of the evangelical New Birth but wished to restrain its more egalitarian and emotional excesses—and more radical evangelicals who welcomed the sweeping psychological and social changes unleashed by revivalism. Kidd's work also mentions anti-revivalists such as Charles Chauncy and Alexander Garden, although the true heart of the book rests in the innumerable clashes, compromises, and cleavages between radical and moderate evangelicals. What is most refreshing about Kidd's work is that he paints both the development of evangelicalism and its concomitant splintering into radical and moderate factions on a geographically wide-ranging canvas. Initially charting the development of evangelical revivalism on a transatlantic scale, Kidd hones in on its dissemination throughout British North America. In boldly claiming all colonial America as his intellectual province, Kidd itinerates across the territory deftly weaving regional revivals into a cohesive narrative that emphasizes the geographic ubiquity of evangelical radicalism and the equally widespread commitment of evangelical moderates to contain the visions, signs, wonders, and leveling spirit unleashed by the revivals. In thematically connecting the stories of New England's James Davenport, New Jersey's Gilbert Tennent, South Carolina's Hugh Bryan, Nova Scotia's Henry Alline, the itinerating George Whitefield, and hosts of others in a period stretching nearly fifty years, Kidd's narrative constructs a "long First Great Awakening" that continually oscillates between radical and moderate polarities and experiences "fits and starts" of emotional revivalism (323). Importantly, Kidd argues that, despite their differences, moderate and radical evangelicals were united by a common culture of evangelicalism—a shared acceptance of the power of the Holy Spirit—that differed only in degree. And yet, given their major differences in polity and theology, one wonders if eighteenth-century Baptists, Congregationalists, and Shakers saw through their scruples to appreciate this common evangelical culture? Moreover, while Kidd's study aims at an inclusive coverage of evangelical groups in the period, he says little about early Methodists and evangelical Anglicans. Nevertheless, in coherently charting the meteoric growth of North American evangelical groups in the years after 1740, Kidd's synthesis is a welcome addition to studies of the Great Awakening.