Introduction

Summary

The introduction sets out the main themes of the book: that the role of gesture in religious worship was highlighted by the Reformation, and that it was especially significant in the English Reformation. It develops these themes by showing that gesture was central to some of the key concepts of the English Reformation: indifference, uniformity and conformity. First, were certain gestures essential to worship, or were they merely matters of indifference? Secondly, was variation in gesture permissible in public worship, or should all people use the same gestures in order to create a uniform Protestant body? Finally, was gesture a matter of free choice, or did the church have the right to impose gestural conformity on its members? It argues that these questions of church order opened up a larger epistemological question about what gestures meant, or whether, in the end, they meant anything at all.