Podcast Summary:

Podcast: New Books Network – New Books in History
Episode: Paul J. Gutacker, The Old Faith in a New Nation: American Protestants and the Christian Past
Date: January 5, 2026
Host: Lane Davis
Guest: Paul J. Gutacker, Lecturer in History at Baylor University

Episode Overview

This episode centers on Paul J. Gutacker’s book, The Old Faith in a New Nation: American Protestants and the Christian Past (Oxford UP, 2023). Gutacker and host Lane Davis discuss how American Protestants between the Revolution and the Civil War engaged with Christian history, particularly how their historical consciousness influenced debates about religious disestablishment, anti-Catholicism, democratization, marginalized groups, and slavery. The conversation interrogates classic assumptions about early American Protestants' relationship with tradition and the past, offering a nuanced reinterpretation.

Main Themes & Key Discussion Points

1. Purpose and Origins of the Book

[02:13 – 07:04]

• Gutacker explains the inspiration for his book: a desire to challenge the stereotype that American evangelicals and Protestants were uninterested in history.
  • "I noticed that there was an emphasis...on the focus on the Bible and evangelical Biblicism, but that sometimes this gave the impression that, you know, American Protestants broadly, and evangelicals in particular, were not very interested in history." (Paul Gutacker, 02:38)
• Using digital tools, he discovered widespread references to key church histories and figures, suggesting deep engagement with the Christian past.
• The book explores how readings of church history shaped debates on issues like women's rights, religious establishments, and slavery.

2. The "Corruption of the Church" and Religious Disestablishment

[07:04 – 10:40]

• Early American Protestant reformers embraced the narrative that the church’s corruption began with Constantine, using it to support religious disestablishment.
  • "They all were able to tap into this pretty broadly held sense that things had gone really wrong in Christian history. And most Protestants tended to date this to around the time of Constantine." (Paul Gutacker, 07:49)
• This argument enabled Protestants to “blame” Catholicism for past corruption and position American Christianity as a recovery of true apostolic faith, reinforcing American exceptionalism.

3. Which Historians Shaped Protestant Imagination?

[10:40 – 14:21]

• Protestants read and cited a range of historical works, even from skeptics like Hume and Gibbon, because their critiques of Catholicism fit Protestant narratives.
  • "You kind of have to almost plug your nose. The infidelity and unbelief is simmering under the surface, but it's still worth it because you get this really good sense of how things got so corrupted." (Paul Gutacker, 13:08)
• Despite complaints about the lack of good Protestant church histories, figures such as Johann Mosheim and Joseph Milner were widely read; their works shaped the Protestant understanding of history even amid their limitations.

4. Re-examining Classic Historiographical Theses (Hatch and Noll)

[14:21 – 18:57]

• Hatch’s “democratization thesis” (the idea that post-Revolution Protestantism was radically innovative and disregarded the past) is supplemented rather than challenged: Gutacker points out that innovation did not imply ignorance.
  • "This process of rejecting the past doesn't imply an ignorance of the past. In fact, it's often funded by a close attention to the historical texts that they had at the time." (Paul Gutacker, 18:28)

5. Anti-Catholicism and the Use of Christian History

[18:57 – 22:23]

• Anti-Catholic sentiment, prominent before the Revolution and reviving in the 1830s-40s, relied heavily on a historical narrative that defined Catholicism as the root of Christian corruption.
  • "The big narrative that's being taught to Americans on every level of education is there was a pure apostolic faith, things got corrupted, and Catholicism is to blame for that, and Catholicism continues that." (Paul Gutacker, 20:18)
• This narrative permeated educational materials, Sunday schools, and especially nativist responses to Catholic immigration.

6. Controversies in Seminary Education: The Case of Philip Schaff

[22:23 – 27:58]

• Philip Schaff, a Swiss scholar trained in German Romantic historiography, advocated a more organic, evolutionary view of church history, situating Protestantism as emerging from—rather than wholly rejecting—the Catholic tradition.
  • “...the Reformation…it’s the legitimate offspring, the greatest act of the Catholic Church. Right. So recovering the sense in which Luther, Calvin were Catholic, that that reform is birthed from within the church…” (Paul Gutacker, 24:35)
• Schaff’s views, which suggested Catholicism played a legitimate role in Christian history, provoked charges of heresy and inspired Protestant seminaries to craft more “thoroughly Protestant” approaches to church history education.

7. Marginalized Groups and Liberation Historiography

[27:58 – 36:25]

African Americans

• Black ministers and writers adapted prevailing Protestant historical narratives to highlight Christianity’s original commitment to equality and liberation, situating slavery as a corruption of original faith.
  • “...in particular narrating the Christian past as this story of liberation...that racial equality belongs to the era of pure Christianity.” (Paul Gutacker, 28:44)
• They emphasized African roots in Christian theology (e.g., Augustine, Tertullian) to strengthen abolitionist arguments.

Women

• Attention to women in church history grew sharply post-1830, shifting from near-invisibility to recognition of women’s roles in Christianization and church life.
  • "And then sometime around 1830, this begins to shift...there's increasing attention given to women in Christian history, what Christian history means for women." (Paul Gutacker, 32:45)
• These narratives were used in different ways: to argue for women’s domestic spiritual influence and for early feminist advocacy.

8. Slavery, the Civil War, and the Uses (and Limits) of History

[36:25 – 40:47]

• Gutacker revisits Mark Noll’s claim that the slavery debate was a “theological crisis” focused only on scripture, suggesting instead that both sides invoked history—often selectively—to justify their positions.
  • "The tragic irony is that this theological debate did not fail because they ignored history or didn't pay attention to tradition, but precisely because both sides were convinced that history was on their side precisely because they were reading it..." (Paul Gutacker, 40:35)
• This selective, partisan reading of Christian history reinforced divides rather than resolving the crisis.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Breaking from custom, breaking from tradition, innovating, democratizing in these ways meant that these groups, Methodist, Baptist, churches of Christ, didn’t care about what happened before. ...and in fact…they think it’s essential to know that history.”
  — Paul Gutacker, 16:42

• “The anti-Catholic thread really goes throughout the book, and it only modifies slightly at the end, I think, in the chapters on slavery. But one of the more implicit arguments that I’m trying to make is their reading of history really assures them that Catholicism is a threat because they again, they take this for granted.”
  — Paul Gutacker, 21:39

• “If you think that the whole weight of Christian history is on your side, it's going to make it even harder for the debate to move forward.”
  — Paul Gutacker, 40:15

Timestamps for Important Segments

• 02:13 – Purpose, inspiration for the book, and methodological advances using digital tools
• 07:35 – Use of "corruption of the church" narrative for disestablishment arguments
• 11:17 – Surprising range of historians influencing Protestants
• 14:51 – Democratization thesis and Protestant relationship to history
• 19:24 – Anti-Catholicism, education, and Protestant historical narratives
• 22:59 – Philip Schaff and controversy in seminaries
• 28:23 – "Liberation historiography" among African Americans
• 32:27 – Dramatic changes in women’s historical representation
• 36:59 – Use and limits of history in the slavery debate and the Civil War

Closing

Gutacker’s book, The Old Faith in a New Nation, is praised for its nuanced intervention in the study of American religious history, upending assumptions about early American Protestant attitudes toward tradition and the past. The episode provides depth on how historical imagination was actively contested and politicized within American Protestantism—and why that legacy still matters.

Connect with Paul Gutacker:

• Twitter: @pvettaker
• Brazos Fellows blog: brazosfellows.com