Founding the Fathers explores the development of early Christian history and theology as a discipline in four nineteenth-century Protestant seminaries in the United States. Archival sources reveal how professors adjusted German scholarship to fit Americans' evangelical assumptions and to make the Catholic past more palatable.

Founding the Fathers
Early Church History and Protestant Professors in Nineteenth-Century America

Elizabeth A. Clark

2011 | 576 pages | Cloth $69.95
Religion | American History
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Table of Contents

Introduction: Higher Education and Religion in Nineteenth-Century United States

PART I. THE SETTING: CONTEXTUALIZING THE STUDY OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY IN AMERICA
1. The Institutions and the Professors
2. Infrastructure: Teaching, Textbooks, Primary Sources, and Libraries

PART II. HISTORY AND HISTORIOGRAPHY
3. Defending the Faith: European Theories and American Professors
4. History and Church History
5. Development and Decline: Challenges to Historiographical Categories

PART III. TOPICS OF EARLY CHRISTIAN HISTORY IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY ANALYSIS
6. Polity and Practice
7. Roman Catholicism
8. Asceticism, Marriage, Women, and the Family
9. The Uses of Augustine
Conclusion

Appendix: Student Notetakers
List of Abbreviations and Archival Sources
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments