- Represents the only English language single-volume survey of the rise of early modern Protestantism from its Lutheran beginnings in Germany to its spread to America
- Offers a thematic approach to Protestantism by tracing its development within the social, political, and cultural context of early modern Europe
- Introduces innovative argument that the central dynamic of Protestantism was not its struggle with Catholicism but its own inner dynamic
- Breaks from traditional scholarship by arguing that the rise of Reformation Protestantism lasted at least two centuries
- Unites Old World and New World Protestant histories