General listeners wanting to better understand the religious background of American life and politics will also enjoy its engaging and insightful overview. Written with the student in mind, America's Religious History offers an up-to-date, narrative introduction useful for undergraduate and graduate-level courses on American religion. Interweaving religious history and key events from the larger narrative of American history, the audiobook considers how faith commitments and categories have shaped the nation. Kidd traces the theological and ethnic diversity and enduring strength of American religion, with special attention to Christianity and evangelical faith. In America's Religious History, leading historian Thomas S. Yet from the colonial era to the present, American men and women have been, and have remained, a pervasively religious people.
America is undoubtedly secular in many ways, and our constitutional order requires a clear distinction between faith communities and government. An older generation of scholars expected that America and the rest of the Western world was headed inexorably toward secularization and the end of religion. In the post-9/11 world, it is not difficult to see how important religion remains in America and around the globe. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255. The opinions I have expressed are my own, and I was not required to write a positive review.
#American history kidd free#
Publisher: B&H Academic (December 1, 2019)ĭisclosure: I received this book free from B&H Academic. This is an excellent history book, one that I wish I would have had in college. Each chapter ends with a “selected biography” of a few resources for further reading. The book has many pictures, illustrations, and maps. I am amazed at the breadth of information and detail Kidd knows and can relay. As you will read you will see example after example of how the historical events that shaped our country didn’t happen in a vacuum. Kidd is adept at weaving narratives together, showing why certain events worked or didn’t work due to other historical factors. He doesn’t try to make people seem “Christian.” He writes what people did, and if what they did was lousy, a lie, or horrendous, it will show. Kidd shows the messiness of history with its ups and downs and tangential characters. He doesn’t look only at the big events and heroes of the past, but at minor characters who many either forget about or never hear about: Native Americans, minorities, women, slaves, and small religious groups. There have been brutal battles, sometimes in the name of God, that we’re horrendous and uncalled for. Faith played a pivotal role for many-though not all-of the Europeans who initially traveled here and throughout the growth of the nation. I enjoyed Kidd’s emphasis on the role of faith. 
Kids ends by writing, “I hope that readers will grow in their appreciation for the role played in the American past and discern the ways in which America has been (or has not been) a congenial place for people of faith to flourish” (2). It reveals to us the courage of our past heroes-great and small-to inspire us “to honor their legacies” (2).
It not only tells us how we got to where we are today, but it reminds us of the sins in our past so that we will hopefully not repeat them again.
The state of American culture, “Especially in regard to issues such as virtue, traditional moral norms, mass media, and entertainment” (2).Īs Kidd notes, a history book on America is like a “national autobiography” (2). Religion (primarily the Christian faith). So in order to make this book manageable, Kidd focused on a few major themes of America’s history: Since this is the Combined Edition there is no “volume one” and “volume two ” it is simply one massive treasury of a book.Ī history book that covers almost 530 years cannot include everything. The volume moves through the roaring twenties, the growing consumerism of the 1950s, Billy Graham, rock and roll, civil rights, women’s rights, immigration, Clinton, Bush, terrorism, Obama, and Trump. Immigration, businesses, and urban centers all expanded, and settlers moved west. Volume two began with America reforging itself as a continental powerhouse. The original Volume One began with the early (and already often-changing world of) Native Americans, the coming of the Europeans, and the conquest of the Americas, and it extended to America and freedom for slaves. Kidd’s two volumes of American history have been combined into one volume that spans from 1492 to the 2016 presidential election and Donald Trump. Kidd writes at the Evangelical History blog at The Gospel Coalition. Kidd teaches at Baylor University and later this year will begin as Research Professor of Church History at MBTS.
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