Thomas S. Kidd has 5 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 5 narrators. The most-rated is God of Liberty.
America's Religious History: Audio Lectures
Summary
The Zondervan Biblical and Theological Lectures series provides a unique audio learning experience. Unlike a traditional audiobook's direct narration of a book's text, America’s Religious History: Audio Lectures includes high quality live-recordings of college-level lectures that cover the important points from each subject as well as relevant material from other sources. In the post-9/11 world, it is not difficult to see how important religion remains in America and around the globe. An older generation of scholars expected that America and the rest of the Western world was headed toward secularization and the end of religion. America is undoubtedly secular in many ways, and our constitutional order requires a clear distinction between faith communities and government. Yet from the colonial era to the present, American men and women have been, and have remained, a pervasively religious people. In America's Religious History: Audio Lectures, leading historian Thomas S. Kidd traces the theological and ethnic diversity and enduring strength of American religion, with special attention to Christianity and evangelical faith. Interweaving religious history and key events from the larger narrative of American history, the audio lectures consider how faith commitments and categories have shaped the nation. America's Religious History: Audio Lectures offers an up-to-date, narrative introduction to the religious background of American life.
©2019 Thomas S. Kidd (P)2019 Zondervan
Benjamin Franklin
Summary
Renowned as a printer, scientist, and diplomat, Benjamin Franklin also published more works on religious topics than any other 18th-century American layperson. Born to Boston Puritans, by his teenage years Franklin had abandoned the exclusive Christian faith of his family and embraced deism. But Franklin, as a man of faith, was far more complex than the "thorough deist" who emerges in his autobiography. As Thomas Kidd reveals, deist writers influenced Franklin's beliefs, to be sure, but devout Christians in his life - including George Whitefield, the era's greatest evangelical preacher; his parents; and his beloved sister Jane - kept him tethered to the Calvinist creed of his Puritan upbringing. Based on rigorous research into Franklin's voluminous correspondence, essays, and almanacs, this fresh assessment of a well-known figure unpacks the contradictions and conundrums faith presented in Franklin's life.
©2017 Thomas S. Kidd (P)2017 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books
Who Is an Evangelical?
Summary
A leading historian of evangelicalism offers a concise history of evangelicals and how they became who they are today. Evangelicalism is arguably America’s most controversial religious movement. Non-evangelical people who follow the news may have a variety of impressions about what “evangelical” means. But one certain association they make with evangelicals is white Republicans. Many may recall that 81 percent of self-described white evangelicals voted for Donald Trump, and they may well wonder at the seeming hypocrisy of doing so. In this illuminating audiobook, Thomas Kidd draws on his expertise in American religious history to retrace the arc of this spiritual movement, illustrating just how historically peculiar that political and ethnic definition (white Republican) of evangelicals is. He examines distortions in the public understanding of evangelicals and shows how a group of “Republican insider evangelicals” aided the politicization of the movement. This book will be a must-listen for those trying to better understand the shifting religious and political landscape of America today. The book is published by Yale University Press. The audiobook is published by University Press Audiobooks. Praise for the book: “A concise but assured history of the evangelical movement.” (Atlantic) “Examines evangelicalism with clarity and insight, through the telling of a riveting story.” (Russell Moore, president, The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention) “Part history, part lament, this book offers a bracing introduction to evangelicalism in America.” (Catherine A. Brekus, author of Sarah Osborn’s World)
©2019 Thomas Kidd (P)2019 Redwood Audiobooks
Baptists in America
Summary
The Puritans called Baptists "the troublers of churches in all places" and hounded them out of Massachusetts Bay Colony. Four hundred years later, Baptists are the second-largest religious group in America, and their influence matches their numbers. They have built strong institutions, from megachurches to publishing houses to charities to mission organizations, and have firmly established themselves in the mainstream of American culture. Yet the historical legacy of outsider status lingers, and the inherently fractured nature of their faith makes Baptists ever wary of threats from within as well as without. In Baptists in America, Thomas S. Kidd and Barry Hankins explore the long-running tensions between church, state, and culture that Baptists have shaped and navigated. Despite the moment of unity that their early persecution provided, their history has been marked by internal battles and schisms that were microcosms of national events, from the conflict over slavery that divided North from South to the conservative revolution of the 1970s and '80s. Baptists have made an indelible impact on American religious and cultural history, from their early insistence that America should have no established church to their place in the modern-day culture wars, where they frequently advocate greater religious involvement in politics. Yet the more mainstream they have become, the more they have been pressured to conform to the mainstream, a paradox that defines - and is essential to understanding - the Baptist experience in America. Kidd and Hankins, both practicing Baptists, weave the threads of Baptist history alongside those of American history. Baptists in America is a remarkable story of how one religious denomination was transformed from persecuted minority into a leading actor on the national stage, with profound implications for American society and culture.
©2015 Thomas S. Kidd and Barry Hankins (P)2015 Audible, Inc.
God of Liberty
Summary
Before the Revolutionary War, America was a nation divided by different faiths. But when the war for independence sparked in 1776, colonists united under the banner of religious freedom. Evangelical frontiersmen and Deist intellectuals set aside their differences to defend a belief they shared, the right to worship freely. Inspiring an unlikely but powerful alliance, it was the idea of religious liberty that brought the colonists together in the battle against British tyranny. In God of Liberty, historian Thomas S. Kidd argues that the improbable partnership of evangelicals and Deists saw America through the Revolutionary War, the ratification of the Constitution, and the election of Thomas Jefferson in 1800. A thought-provoking reminder of the crucial role religion played in the Revolutionary era, God of Liberty represents both a timely appeal for spiritual diversity and a groundbreaking excavation of how faith powered the American Revolution.
©2010 Thomas S. Kidd (P)2010 Audible, Inc.