Journal of Discipliana
Document Type
Book Review
Abstract
The starting point for Paul Gutacker’s wide-ranging study is the standard claim that these American reformers—the architects of a proliferating American denominationalism—basically dismissed Christian history, adopting an indifference and often hostility towards it; and furthermore, that this claim has continued to mark the scholarly literature of our time. Gutacker begs to differ. He seeks to demonstrate that, between the Revolution and the Civil War, American Christian leaders “were not ahistorical or functionally antitradition, but deeply interested in both history and tradition. . . . They studied religious historiography, wrote about the Christian past, and argued over its implications for the present.” His focus includes not only scholars and ministers but the “historical imaginations of ordinary educated Protestants.” With this wide focus he attempts to map “American memories of the Christian past.”
Recommended Citation
Allen, Leonard
(2024)
"Review of Paul J. Gutacker, The Old Faith in a New Nation: American Protestants and the Christian Past,"
Journal of Discipliana: Vol. 77, Article 6.
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.discipleshistory.org/journalofdiscipliana/vol77/iss1/6
Included in
Christian Denominations and Sects Commons, History of Christianity Commons, Religious Thought, Theology and Philosophy of Religion Commons