The hallmark of German Protestant academic theology in the nineteenth century was its historicisation. Its premise was that Christianity's basic and essential truths could be disclosed through historical criticism of the Bible and other early texts. Even within the Protestant theological faculties, however, this premise was broadly contested, for it seemed to challenge the very idea of divine revelation and the eternal truth of Christian dogma. Repeated controversies between the proponents and opponents of historical criticism thus erupted during the late nineteenth century; and the most troubling had to do with the question whether the Apostles’ Creed represented a sacrosanct text or a historical document. The implications of the debates reached deep into matters of doctrine, liturgy and ecclesiastical constitution. Julia Winnebeck's dissertation draws on exhaustive research in the archives and contemporary sources to analyse these controversies. To Protestant liberals, the intellectual heirs of Friedrich Schleiermacher and Ferdinand Christian Baur, the Apostles’ Creed could be objected to on several counts. It entailed dogmatic propositions whose historical authenticity (to say nothing of their plausibility) could not be demonstrated. Particularly problematic was the doctrine of Jesus’ miraculous birth: ‘conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary’. Critics objected further to the Creed's central place in the liturgy, particularly the requirement, which prevailed in most of the Prussian and other German Protestant Churches, that it be recited at baptism, confirmation and ordination, as well as in Sunday services, and that it be understood as the word of God. The defenders of the Apostles’ Creed, the conservative Protestants who were in the majority in the consistories as well as the synods, resisted both the historical attack on dogma and calls to allow clergymen to eliminate, modify or interpret recitation of the Creed in the light of their own doctrinal convictions. The Creed represented, its defenders argued, the foundational formulation of Christian belief, a common dogmatic bond without which the Church could not exist. In this way, the issue of the Apostles’ Creed became, as Winnebeck notes, a ‘red flag in the disputes among the parties’ (p. 244) into which German Protestantism had split. The disputes played out in parishes, synods, ecclesiastical offices, before special tribunals and in the press. The stakes were high, for the moral as well as the institutional integrity of the Church seemed to be at stake. A number of cases led to the censure or dismissal of critics from clerical office. Julia Winnebeck's dissertation lays out in rich detail the many issues that attended the controversy over the Apostles’ Creed. Her work is a welcome addition to scholarship on the theology and politics of German Protestantism in the nineteenth century.