One of the basic and most important arguments of this book is that lay religious experience in Dutch communities was far from monolithic and was, in fact, often divergent from official proclamations by theologians and synods. Such a conclusion may seem obvious, but scholarship on the Reformations at least occasionally remains beholden to arguments or implicit assumptions that the Reformations were a top-down affair in which powerful theologians dictated changes to religious laity. The acceptance of these arguments and assumptions has arisen out of a temptation, driven in part by Enlightenment ideals, to privilege theology over practice.

For far too long the story told of the Reformation was one where powerful, white men opened people's eyes to religious truth. Once these heroic leaders illuminated the gospel truth, Christians throughout Europe bravely joined the cause. This top-down approach, if hyperbolically described, placed the impetus for change in the hands of a few theologically literate men. However, this narrative is no longer sufficient. Discussing Luther, for example, Susan Karant-Nunn pointed out over forty years ago that “the age is past when men look exclusively to the life and theology of Martin Luther for insight into the success of the German Reformation.” The Calvin Studies Society, in a volume edited by Amy Nelson Burnett, provided a similar corrective regarding Calvin through a sequence of essays that address the “myth and reality” of Calvin.