Thomas S. Kidd

Biography

Thomas S. Kidd serves as Research Professor of Church History at Midwestern & the John and Sharon Yeats Endowed Chair of Baptist Studies. Kidd completed a Ph.D. in history at the University of Notre Dame, where he worked with historian of religion George Marsden. He also earned Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees at Clemson University in South Carolina.

Kidd has authored numerous books including 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), American History, vols. 1 and 2 (B&H Academic, 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), and The Great Awakening: The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America (Yale University Press, 2007).

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.

He and his wife, Ruby, have two sons, Jonathan and Joshua.