It is designed to make accessible to readers much of the most recent research, and to guide them through the major historical controversies of the last twenty-five years:
* the causes of the English Reformation
* the popularity of the Elizabethan Protestant Church
* the impact of the Laudian innovations of the 1630s
* the Puritan attempt to control popular culture and belief.
By adopting a thematic rather than chronological approach, the book is also able to chart the long-term developments across the period in key areas such as doctrinal and liturgical change, the role of the clergy, and the importance of religion in the everyday lives of people.