Recovering the assumptions that underlay policies of suppressing religious dissent. Rather than simply treating intolerance as absurd or hopelessly regressive, Walsham and Kaplan explain why dissent or heterodoxy was associated with unrest or sedition. Officials presumed that punishment was beneficial to those on the receiving end; enforced conformity saved souls by discouraging dissent and incorporating more people within the framework of orthodoxy, an irony (to us) marvelously captured in the title of Walsham's book.

Recovering policies and practices of tolerance that existed alongside policies and episodes of repression. Walsham and Kaplan point out that despite their commitment to intolerance, political leaders and, to a lesser extent, their religious counterparts were aware of the social costs of imposing uniformity by force. Queen Elizabeth I was especially concerned about these consequences, for the kingdom and church she inherited in 1558 were remarkably diverse and, as Walsham emphasizes, filled with priests and people who, by force of circumstance, had recently veered from one end of the religious spectrum to the other. The conventional narrative supposes that church and civil leaders knew what they should be enforcing and did so consistently, but from Walsham's perspective, attempts to impose uniformity were contingent on which factions had the upper hand both locally and within the highest levels of the state. As this politics went, so went practices of enforcement, which is to say, intermittently and inconsistently.

Recognizing the differences between state policy and local practice. As Kaplan and Walsham demonstrate with great effectiveness, local magistrates, priests, ministers, and people often looked the other way when orders to suppress dissent reached them. A telling example from early New England is the reluctance of local communities to levy steep fines imposed from on high when doing so would then require them to provide goods and services for the newly impoverished family or kinship network.

Foregrounding practices that defied the boundaries dividing Catholic from Protestant or Jew from Christian. As told by Walsham and Kaplan, one part of this story concerns the ability of dissenters to disguise themselves—famously, in Tudor-Stuart England, the "church papists" and, as recent work has also demonstrated, Protestant radicals of various kinds. Kaplan points to the practice of interfaith marriage as another example of boundary crossing, noting that, although sharply condemned, it was also condoned because of the possibilities it offered for conversion (the formerly nonorthodox spouse could safely transfer his or her allegiance to the orthodox position).