Worship and the parish church in early modern Britain

"The parish church was the primary site of religious practice throughout the early modern period. This was particularly so for the silent majority of the English population, who conformed outwardly to the successive religious upheavals of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. What such public conformity might have meant has attracted less attention-- and ironically, is sometimes less well-documented--than the non-conformity or semi-conformity of recusants, church-papists, Puritan conventiclers or separatists. In this volume, ten leading scholars of early modern religion explore the experience of parish worship in England and Scotland during the Reformation and the century that followed it. As contributors argue, parish worship in this period was of critical theological, cultural and even political importance"--Book jacket.