A common complaint about Protestant evangelicalism is
its apparent disconnection from ancient Christianity. The
antiquity and catholicity of Roman Catholicism and Eastern
Orthodoxy seem to outshine the relative novelty of the
Reformation. Some evangelical churches appear to be
uninterested in the ancient historical roots of their faith as
well as being liturgically and doctrinally unstable, resulting in
a number of younger Protestants abandoning evangelicalism,
turning instead to practices and traditions that appear more
rooted in the early church.
In Search of Ancient Roots argues that the evangelical
tradition in fact has a much healthier track record of
interacting with Christian antiquity than it is usually given
credit for. Ken Stewart surveys five centuries of Protestant
engagement with the ancient church, showing that Christians
belonging to the evangelical churches of the Reformation
have consistently seen their faith as connected to early
Christianity and binding together the historical connections
to show that evangelicalism is still in tune with older Christian
traditions.