New London ― New London Landmarks will host a virtual lecture Nov. 3 at 7 p.m. on the Shepherd’s Tent college and the Great Awakening by author and historian Thomas S. Kidd.

“Few people know that 77 Truman Street is one of New London’s oldest buildings,” said Laura Natusch, executive director of New London Landmarks, in a news release. “Even fewer know that in the early 1740s it was the Shepherd’s Tent, a radical breakaway college founded by evangelical dissenters who had once been associated with Yale College.”

This lecture is funded with grants from Connecticut’s State Historic Preservation Office and Connecticut Humanities and is sponsored by Fiddleheads Food Cooperative.

This event is free, but attendees must pre-register to receive the webinar link: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_deZLJTcoRl-hXOCd2LS-EQ

According to Kidd, the radical evangelicals “challenged the existing structures of power in state, church, and education … Connecticut authorities passed laws to stop the radicals' subversive activities, and in one instance, they called out the militia to subdue the followers of the arch-radical revival preacher James Davenport. His followers conspicuously included poor people, African Americans, and Native Americans. Davenport's meteoric career flamed out, literally, in a books- and clothes-burning he held in 1743 in New London, an act which proved to be too extreme even for many of his followers.”

Kidd is the author of numerous books, including The Great Awakening: The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America (Yale University Press). He is the research professor of church history at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

For further information, email director@newlondonlandmarks.org.