The First Great Awakening, an unprecedented surge in Protestant Christian revivalism in the eighteenth century, sparked enormous controversy at the time and has been a source of scholarly debate ever since. Few historians have sought to write a synthetic history of the First Great Awakening, and, in recent decades, its having happened at all has been challenged as being either an exaggeration or an "invention."

This history, based on meticulous research into the correspondence and documentation of the founding fathers leading up to and encompassing the crafting of the Declaration of Independence, sheds light on how the Judeo-Christian worldview motivated America's founding fathers, influenced national independence, inspired our foundational documents, and established the American nation--From publisher description

"Thomas Kidd, a widely respected scholar of colonial history, deftly offers both depth and breadth in this accessible, introductory text on the American Colonial era. Interweaving primary documents and new scholarship with a vivid narrative reconstructing the lives of European colonists, Africans, and Native Americans and their encounters in colonial North America, Kidd offers fresh perspectives on these events and the period as a whole. This compelling...