The essays start with a reference to Owen Chadwick's seminal lectures on the ‘secularisation of the European mind’ – a phrase attributed by Chadwick to Heinrich Hermelink (‘Secularisation’, p. 11). The volume challenges what it calls the long ‘reigning paradigm for understanding religion under the conditions of modernity’ – that there was an increasing dwindling of the force of Christianity. That linear view of intellectual development is replaced with what appears more a story of religious paradox or inversion, where weakness and radical transformation lead to renewed strength: like Paul Tillich's God appearing in the darkness. The essays recognise fundamental shifts in thought, but that they were more complex and heterogenous that perhaps previously appreciated. David Lincicum, in his essay on ‘Criticism and authority’, recognises a striking general pattern of ‘secularisation’ but says that

This is not a book for people who like dichotomies or who think that religion and science cannot speak to each other. It is a reflection, as Joel Rasmussen writes, on the conversation between Christian thought and ‘new insights and other intellectual traditions’ which may lead to ‘some critically reflective equilibrium concerning what is taken in faith to be the ultimately meaningful nature of reality … faith seeking understanding’. For, as Donovan Schaefer argues, the picture is of theology not ‘directed by its own internal logics’ but ‘meaningfully in conversation with events and histories around it’. It must have been a significant editorial challenge to bring together such a diversity of material. The range of topics has been brought into a coherent whole, partly through the device of a symposium at Trinity College, Oxford. The result is a systematically organised volume where the reader is well guided, with each chapter including an explicit conclusion drawing out the wider themes. The project is an example of the shift towards groups of scholars working collectively and producing complementary insights. The volume draws considerable breadth from focus on thought rather than theology and the essays discuss major intellectual, political and cultural shifts during the period, drawing the reader into ever wider spheres of thought. It falls to Richard Roberts to write about God and he points beyond the interests addressed by the essays to the anthropology of ritual, evolutionary theory and neuroscience. Some of the chapters are heavier with philosophical and theological terminology to challenge a general reader, although all are eminently readable. Some of the most engaging chapters draw out the overarching themes in relation to culture and society and the arts. William Whyte reflects on the surge of church building during a supposed age of secularisation in the nineteenth century; he recognises the range of underlying factors, including elements of defensiveness in the face of challenge, but argues that the adoption of such a variety of building styles is an indicator of revival and a ‘thoroughly modern sense of what the past might mean in the present and how historical forms could embrace contemporary needs’. Andrew Tait argues that the novel, ‘far from becoming a wholly secular genre, gained theological confidence’. Movingly, Linzy Brady and Jolyon Mitchell draw out the diversification of theatrical expression by contrasting the abject but idealistic scenario of the play ‘Sign of the Cross’ where noble people face their deaths true to their faith and the call of love, with the abject depravity of Tolstoy's ‘Power of Darkness’: there is the darkness again, where God is apt to appear. The predominantly Western European and Protestant perspectives in the volume are complemented by chapters examining developments in the Orthodox and the Roman Catholic Church and the interaction between Christian thought and that of other religions. There is a sensitivity to neglected perspectives and to the muted voices of people on the margins, as befits a revisionist study. We see how the decline of the power of clerics leads to the empowerment of the laity and the opening of the diversity of thought. Michael Gladwin considers the exposure of European thought to global influence through mission and colonialism. This is no work of Christian apology. The effect on Christian thought of the profound trauma of the First World War is evident and James Turner Johnson describes the unresolved contradiction of Christian approaches to war. Peter Lineham notes a ‘loss in the range of Christian thought and debate within the larger community’ that resulted from the dissipation of energy on sectarianism. We see how the institutional Churches slid towards ‘political irrelevance … throughout the nineteenth century’ (Mark Chapman) with the monarchical papacy struggling to come to terms with modernity well towards the later twentieth century (Danielle Menozzi).

There is no end, of course, to the scope for revisionism and the renewal of thought. Frances Knight muses on the decline of interest in nineteenth-century historical theology and wonders about the impact of the decline of use of the ‘old mapping techniques that were once used to expose, explore and defend the intellectual foundations of Anglicanism’. She suggests that the nineteenth century might have to be recovered from a period of obscurity rather as the eighteenth century was rescued by scholars at the end of the twentieth century: there is an emerging task for future generations of researchers.

It is a privilege to be invited to review the work of this collective of distinguished scholars. This is a book for a desert island; it is a wide-ranging work of interdisciplinary synthesis and a stimulating and accessible introduction to more specialist reading. The essays point implicitly to the obstacle in the way of the study of history, culture and society for those from generations who are not familiar with the Bible as a basic source of understanding intellectual and cultural development of continuing vitality.