Focusing on Catholic primary schooling in France from 1830 through World War I, Curtis shows how religious education played a key role in transforming France into a modern nation. She finds persuasive evidence that the French Catholic teaching orders created the culture needed for the development of a modern educational system.

Curtis focuses her extensive research on the province of Lyon, though many of her findings can be applied more generally. Her argument that decisions about schooling were driven by pragmatic as well as ideological considerations, for example, is a model for further investigation. Educating the Faithful is the first major study in English of religious education in modern France.