Table of Contents

Introduction Chapter One: Overturning the Past: The Failure of Christendom and the Disestablishment of American Churches
Chapter Two: Restoring the Past: Tradition and the Democratization of Christianity
Chapter Three: Fulfilling the Past: Teaching the Lessons of Christian History to an Exceptional Nation
Chapter Four: Protecting the Past: The Troubled Place of History in Protestant Seminaries
Chapter Five: Rewriting the Past: How Women Recovered their Place in Christian History
Chapter Six: Liberating the Past: Christian History in the Debate over Slavery
Chapter Seven: Fighting for the Past: Christian History during Crisis and War Epilogue

About the Author

Paul J. Gutacker holds a PhD in History from Baylor University and the MA and ThM from Regent College (Vancouver, BC). He has published in Church History, The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, Fides et Historia, and The International Journal of Christianity & Education. In addition to lecturing in the History Department at Baylor University, Paul serves as director of Brazos Fellows, a post-college fellowship centered on
theological study, spiritual disciplines, and vocational discernment.

Reviews

Paul Gutacker's wide-ranging research has demonstrated what other historians (including myself) have ignored or misconstrued: 'religious memory' in fact meant a very great deal to antebellum American Protestants. Although references to history worked differently for different groups, women, Blacks, proslavery advocates, abolitionists, defenders of denominational distinctives, and others-all industriously appealed to the past as they sought to persuade the public. This book represents the best kind of insightful corrective.
*Mark Noll, author of America's Book: The Rise and Decline of a Bible Civilization, 1794-1911*

Gutacker has written a groundbreaking reassessment of how American Protestants struggled with religious authority. Just as important, however, this book also reminds us that history matters in ways that we do not always acknowledge.
*James P. Byrd, author of A Holy Baptism of Fire and Blood: The Bible and the American Civil War*

In his well-researched study of the antebellum American Protestant uses of Christian history, Gutacker lucidly demonstrates that despite their reputation for placing authority in the Bible alone, American believers often relied on church history and tradition. The Old Faith in a New Nation is essential reading for those looking to understand how nineteenth-century American Protestants imagined church history and how this historical imagining undergirded their commitments and deepened their divisions, particularly when it came to slavery.
*Molly Oshatz, Senior Fellow, Zephyr Institute*

History matters. But the study of history is not enough. Paul Gutacker, in this piercingly insightful study of how Christian history was received by Americans before the Civil War, shows the profound effects that the present can have on how humans make sense of the past. History is a study of change over time, but the contested ways which the past is received by generations located in later contexts also changes over time. Gutacker deftly demonstrates the significance of reading history. And he shows the indispensability of prudent historical thinking. The way we think about history matters, too.
*John D. Wilsey, Associate Professor of Church History, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary*

American evangelicals have always been people of the good book, but they have also relied heavily upon the past to shape their convictions. In this fascinating study of the historical consciousness of evangelicals in the early national United States, historian Paul Gutacker complicates prevailing narratives of evangelical anti-intellectualism and primitivism by showing that born-again believers regularly employed Christian history to make sense of the most pressing social and political issues of the day.
*John Fea, Distinguished Professor of American History, Messiah University*

It is unrealistic to believe that we, as historical creatures, can abstract ourselves entirely from history, even bad history, much as we might wish we could. The great virtue of Gutacker's book is its effectiveness in underscoring that very point.
*Wilfred M. McClay, Action Institute*

Paul Gutacker's The Old Faith in a New Nation: American Protestants and the Christian Past is a remarkable book.
*Glenn A. Moots, Professor of Political Science and Philosophy at Northwood University*

Gutacker's book...is valuable for any historians still prone to characterize American Protestantism as proudly ignorant of the past and shamelessly confident in its innovations.
*Darryl G. Hart, Church History*

The Old Faith in a New Nation opens rooms for these questions because of its ambition to examine how constructions of Christian history shaped early American Protestantism. It serves as an important critique of earlier works that have downplayed the universe of sources and media objects that informed Protestant politics and culture.
*Michael Baysa, Journal of the Early Republic *

The old faith in a new nation deserves a wide readership. This book is an outstanding work of intellectual history that greatly enhances our understanding of the development of Protestant theology between the American Revolution and the Civil War.
*Curtis D. Johnson, Journal of Ecclesiastical History*

Gutacker has made an important contribution to the field of American religious history generally and to the historiography of nineteenth-century American Protestantism specifically with this incisive, eye-opening study.
*Devin C. Manzullo-Thomas, Journal of Presbyterian History*

Gutacker's book is an excellent contribution to a growing body of scholarship on the depth, variety, and complexity of American historical engagement in the decades between the Revolution and the Civil War.
*Jordan T. Watkins, Journal of Church and State*

Gutacker's rich and careful mining of a large array of Protestant literature between theRevolutionary and Civil Wars provides an important corrective to the standard view thatthe long Christian tradition mattered little to those who were reshaping Protestantism inthe new American nation.
*Leonard Allen, Journal of Discipliana*

This is an engaging book, which will be a worthwhile read to anyone who is interested in the reception history of the early Church Fathers (and Mothers), as well as those who are interested in the religious history of the United States.
*Simon Lewis, The Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society*

Gutacker presents a compelling argument in this extensively researched book. By drawing on a broad array of sources that include sermons, books, speeches, legal arguments, and political texts, he breaks new ground; some of his best ideas connect historical analysis with specific political and social contexts. The book's primary strengths are its acknowledgment of the importance of historical memory and its reconsideration of biblicism. "is exceptional volume has particular value for scholars interested in nineteenth-century American Christianity and its engagement with the "remembered religious past."
*Annette G. Aubert, Fides et Historia*