Includes bibliographical references (p. [511]-514) and indexes.

Setting the scene : the "fair field of folk".

Part 1. Bible and church : the questions begin.

The idea of church -- The idea of faith -- Where was the Bible? -- Becoming and remaining a member of the church -- Penance and the recurring problem of sin -- The eucharist and the idea of sacraments -- Organization, making decisions and keeping together -- The church and the state.

Part 2. Continuity and change in the Middle Ages.

Monastic life, monastic education and awakening social concerns -- The beginning of academic theology and the invention of universities -- The evangelical urge and the wandering preachers -- Religious experiments by the laity -- Rebels, dissidents and repression -- Popular preaching and the Bible in the later Middle Ages.

Part 3. Continuity and change from the Reformation.

Renaissance -- Luther and his heirs : the moderate reformers -- Henry VIII and English Lutheranism -- Peaceful extremists? : the Anabaptist heirs of the Waldensians -- Calvin and his heirs : the Puritan reformers -- The Counter-Reformation -- Church and state again : new political dimensions of the idea of order -- Bible questions continue.

Contravening traditional paradigms of interpretation, Evans charts the controversies and challenges that roiled the era of the Reformation and argues that these are really part of a much longer history of discussion and disputation. Evans takes up several issues and traces the shape of the charged discussions that orbited around these through the patristic, medieval and Reformation eras. In this, she demonstrates that in many ways the Reformation was in considerable continuity with the periods that preceded it, though the consequential outcome of the debates in the sixteenth century was dramatically different. --from publisher description