This volume explores the concept of inhabitance, its cultivation within churches (that is to say, in ‘religious education’ in the American use of the term) and related issues. It is a well-written and interesting monograph, which provides both a considerable scholarly discussion (including nearly 60 pages of notes and references) and many illuminating accounts of relevant practice.

‘Inhabitance’ is an abstract noun coined from the verb to inhabit and the noun inhabitant, which are themselves used with reference to the natural home or habitat of a person or other organism. In Ayres’ persuasive definition, inhabitance is a matter of living well ‘within the context and bounds of [one's] habitat’ (as ‘created and sustained, and loved by God’), ‘by seeking to know and love a particular place in some detail and honoring its rhythms, limits, and possibilities’, while at the same time embracing one's own vulnerability as a living creature (pp. 2–3, 5, 10, 49, 55).

The book begins with an exploration of this rich concept in terms of who human beings truly are, as embedded creatures who not only stand in awe of the natural world but also call it their home. Rather than a backward-looking focus on human sin (although human sinfulness is taken seriously), the author's theology embraces an eschatological doctrine of creation. She contends that what we need in these times of environmental anguish is much more than technological fixes: we need a personal and social reorientation of human life and identity, interpreted here as the metanoia and homecoming of a prodigal. This argument is followed by a reflection on the importance of ecological virtue and its accompanying affections for an ecological wisdom that goes beyond mere cleverness, and which includes what the ecologist E. O. Wilson called biophilia (love of life) and the desire and longing of eros as well as self-giving agape. A central place is also found for the vulnerability of finitude and death (which is ‘real’ and ‘everywhere’ in nature), for ecological sin and grief, and for hope and resilience (pp. 26–37).

Chapter 3 of the book is devoted to theoretical reflections on a pedagogy of inhabitance, in which Ayres endorses a model of paideia, ‘moral formation for participation in a community’, allied with an epistemology of holistic, relational, embodied, and imaginative knowing of – rather than a distanced ‘knowing about’ – nature and its problems (pp. 42, 46, 51–2, 58–60). This account is beautifully developed and cogently argued. Unlike many of its advocates, however, her emphasis on the educative power of formation and nurture is never one-sided. Critical reflection originating in ‘a sharp mind’ is also essential: ‘having been formed as responsible members of a community, educated persons … are obligated to critique structures, ideas, and practices that consciously or unconsciously harm members of that community’. Christians should not just be shaped, therefore, but also empowered ‘to engage critically with the theological and moral traditions in which they are situated’ (pp. 61–3, 156, n. 77, 163, n. 40).

Much of the rest of the book explores the design and outworking of pedagogical practices for inhabitance through a number of case studies. As these practices are (appropriately) heavily contextualised, some of this material may seem rather remote to British church life. Nevertheless, there is much to be learned from these examples of good practice in communities of formation that are also ‘communities of love, accountability, and imagination – communities of hope’, to which the vulnerable, unrooted, alienated prodigal may return and ‘be woven back into the fabric of the place’, and thus live again (pp. 128–30).

This, Ayres affirms, is ‘the path of inhabitance’.