I think few baptist colleges teach church history before the 16th century in any real sense; this is what i've heard anyways.
That's a bit of a caricature. They cover it, but to us it seems like silly under-coverage.
To the OP: The issue, and this includes the ways Evangelicals can read the fathers and come away still Evangelical, is where one places the "locus" of history - the point at which the most significant and definitive forms of Christianity took form. ALL THREE major branches (EO, RCC, Prot) have different loci. Each, then, sees what came before that locus as "leading up to" the locus and everything that came after as either a "falling away" or a process of "working out" that locus.
For us, the locus tends to be the 1st - 4th ecumenical councils (up through Chalcedon). The councils after Chalcedon are seen as "working out" what Chalcedon taught, and Chalcedon is seen as "completing" the natural questions raised by Nicaea (if Christ is co-equal to the Father, then how in the world is He also fully human?). We even call the church fathers before Nicaea the "ante-Nicene fathers" and, recently, Fr. Behr published a study of the pre-Nicene time period titled "The Way to Nicaea."
Don't get me wrong, we love us some early church fathers (Ignatius, Clement, Ireneaus, Cyprian, etc.) - but we excuse a lot of their Christology and Trinitarian language on the grounds that it was pre-Nicene; it was only "building up" to Nicaea.
For us, then, a LOT of focus in history and patristics rests on the 4th - 5th c. with additional heavy focus on the 6th - 8th c and 1st - 3rd c. (as the build up and working out). We, however, seemingly ignore completely what happens after the fall of Constantinople except on a highly local level (e.g. we might talk about particular things happening in the Russian church, or a particular dialogue between Protestants and the EP). It is understudied in our academies (there are NO - I repeat, ZERO - good histories of the 16th - 20th c. of Orthodoxy), and therefore understudied at the parish level as well.
By way of example (to borrow a current issue): does anyone know of a good summary of how the Orthodox Church moved from a Pentarchy within one Oecumenae to a system several autocephalous churches? I mean, some of that move was prefigured as early as the 1st millenium (e.g. with Georgia and Bulgaria), but its really a movement of the last couple hundred years.
Catholics place their locus of history in the high middle ages, really the late 11th c. through the early 14th c. What came before is almost always painted as a building up to that time period - the papacy's gradual growth, the slow acceptance of the filioque, the gradual distancing from the Eastern Churches, and, in particular from the 9th c. onwards, the dramatic and full integration of Augustinian thought into every nook of Catholic theology.
Thus, in RCC church history classes, the first millenium is covered, but covered a LOT less than in Orthodox studies. In particular, the 5th - 7th councils may not be covered AT ALL, and the patristic focus will be almost entirely on the Jerome / Ambrose / Augustine group (with special attention to Benedict), and much less on Athanasius or Cyril of Alexandria (who, due to their significance, will of course still be studied - just not in as much depth as in an Eastern setting).
What comes after the early 14th c. is almost always seen as a falling away with periodic movements towards renewal. The Avignon Papacy and Conciliarism are a falling away, barely renewed in time for the great falling away in the Reformation, followed by the great renewal of the counter-Reformation and the age of exploration (leading to large, new missions fields); then the rise of secularism and nation states and modernity answered first by Vatican I and then by Vatican II. These are, however, all covered with the high middle ages as the principle "vocabulary" by which events are to be evaluated.
The traditional Protestant (hehe) is likely to see the 16th c. or 17th c. as the locus. The Apostolic age was fantastic, but then quickly devolved into corruption (both philosophical and political) that deviated from the faith and required, centuries later, renewal. The devolution was very subtle and very gradual. So they read the fathers, but see in them a MIX of good and bad with, as the timeline progresses, increasingly "unbiblical" theological positions and increasingly politicized motives (esp. after the ominous 4th c.). The Western Middle Ages are seen as the Nadir, requiring the rediscovery and renewal of the Reformation to return the Church to its true roots - the Apostolic Age (encapsulated in the Scriptures) as the norm and rule for faith. AFTER this point is merely a "working out" of that renewal, which must occur continuously (that is, we are always falling away and needing to return to the roots).
Evangelicals, by contrast with other Protestants, may see the 16th c. and a good starting point (it begins the upward road from the nadir of the middle ages), but may wait until the revival culture of the late 19th / early 20th c. (esp. in America) to see Christianity "truly" being practiced - their locus of history may be as late as last century! Think about who they tend to read: Billy Graham, CS Lewis, or more contemporary authors (I speak here on a popular level; in academia, they certainly do read earlier figures).
So, to me, the way an evangelical reads the fathers is to see them in that "vision" of history that imagines a great and gradual falling away. They don't ascribe them any normative influence, if they even feel compelled to respect their faith at all (and many do, though many do not); so when it becomes clear that figures as early as Ignatius of Antioch CLEARLY believed in the real presence of Christ and the three-fold hierarchy (bishop, priest, deacon), this is just taken as a pious deviation from the (recently ended) Scriptural age and the first evidence of the great falling away.
In Christ,
Macarius
