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The Great Awakening: A Brief History With Documents

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Recommended: Essays on The Awakening

Thomas S. Kidd wrote the book “The Great Awakening A Brief History with Documents” in a format that allows its readers to study history the way historians do. The book is broken down into two parts. The first part is a detailed introduction of what happened during the The Great Awakening. The second part includes and explores 36 primary source accounts from this era. These primary source accounts range from pastors’ sermons to the spiritual experiences of slaves, Native Americans and farmers, among others. In this paper I am going to analyze and evaluate a primary source account in this book by written by Nathan Cole.
Nathan Cole was a farmer who heard that George Whitefield was visiting Middletown, Connecticut. His account is a rare and detailed example of experience of attending one of Whitefield 's meetings. I believe that Nathan worshiped George Whitefield almost like a god. When Nathan heard that George Whitefield was coming to Middletown, said he, “ I dropt my tool and I had in my hand an ran home to my wife telling her to make ready quickly to go and hear Mr. Whitefield preach at Middletown, then run to my pasture for my horse with all my might; fearing that I should be too late”.
This experience had a profound impact on Cole’s life. This started his spiritual journey that would last the rest of his remaining years. Cole’s personal …show more content…

Thomas S. Kidd explained that historians only conventionally described the debates over the Great Awakening as a contrast between “New Lights” and “Old Lights”. Kidd further explained that there were actually three main camps: moderate evangelicals, anti revivalists, and radical evangelicals. The introduction was conducted off the author 's research and ideas he obtained form study the primary sources in the second part of his

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