This is a lucid, learned and persuasive study, while simultaneously being sometimes frustrating and under-theorised.

McKechnie seeks to explain how, over three centuries, Roman Asia Minor's ‘sacred canopy’ (a phrase borrowed from the sociologist Peter Berger) shifted from Graeco-Roman polytheism to a post-Constantinian Christianity – a context in which the citizenry of Orcistus found it profitable to present themselves all as believers of ‘the most holy religion’. Though the title presents the focus as Asia Minor entire, McKechnie is principally interested in Phrygia, the nebulous inland territory of west-central Anatolia that was, for most of the period discussed, part of the proconsular province of Asia. McKechnie's reasons for emphasising Phrygia mesh with his overall project: to shift our gaze from the ‘big cities’, and to see smaller, inland and more ‘rural’ centres (‘backwaters’ would be the unkind gloss) as vital engine-rooms of Christianity's first three centuries. Against this background, McKechnie resurrects a currently unfashionable model of Christianisation: one built on brilliant individuals and charismatic preachers, people like Ignatius and Polycarp, Montanus, Prisca and Maximilla, Aberkios of Hierapolis, and lesser-known characters visible through epigraphy. However, this is not a wholesale revival of ‘Great Men’ (and some Great Women) history, for these individuals are carefully located in complex networks of travel and information – ‘knowledge network[s] in which not all nodes were equally influential’, in which great attention is given to local conditions, and to Christian integration into the civic elite. This is a book about individuals, but lots of them. Preachers and information circulated through these networks, achieving a criticality of habituation in the late third century which created the conditions for Christianity's institutionalisation (though not in a single form – McKechnie does not present ‘orthodoxy’ as normative).

Following an introduction justifying the Phrygian focus, chapter i deals with the New Testament period – Paul's Phrygia. The scene for Christianity's expansion is cogently set, both regarding Phrygia's characteristic ‘folk’ religion with its focus on divine intermediaries and dangerous spirits, and the Jewish communities that were extensively integrated into the cities in which they sojourned. Chapter ii focuses on two luminaries of the city of Hierapolis (Pamukkale): Papias and Apollinaris. McKechnie shows how Hierapolis was integrated into a Christian-informational network upon which Papias, especially, drew when composing his material. The next chapter is the monograph's finest: under the subtitle ‘Teachers of Asia’ (and straying outside Phrygia), McKechnie inserts Ignatius, Polycarp and the Acts of Paul and Thecla into his unfolding model. Drawing on Allen Brent's characterisation of Ignatius’ enforced journey across Asia Minor as a religious procession, McKechnie has the ill-fated bishop constituting a short-lived but vital conduit between the developing Christian communities of the region, with Polycarp of Smyrna consolidating this connection over the subsequent decades. Another element is introduced here that will be continually developed: the idea of Polycarp as part of the provincial elite, seen alongside the Sophistic giants who hailed from his hometown. Chapters iv and v deal with Montanism, the ‘Phrygian heresy’, insisting on its normalcy in the context of second- and third-century Phrygian Christianity, showing too how its growth depended on a complex network of preachers. Chapters vi and vii explore Aberkios, bishop of Hierapolis (Koçhisar), first through his celebrated early third-century funerary epitaph, demonstrating his easy fit into the mobile, elite networks that McKechnie has sketched, and then through his late fourth-century hagiography (translated into English in the Appendix). Chapter viii is an epigraphic study focusing mainly on the town of Apollonia, where McKechnie argues that we can glimpse the canopy metamorphising in a small civic context as local elites begin to turn to Christianity. The next two chapters develop this, investigating two specific Christian formulae in locally-clustered, third-century Phrygian inscriptions. McKechnie continues to emphasise Christianity's infiltration of the petty elite, the construction of Christian networks and the importance of minor civic communities. Finally, chapter xi presents an account of the Great Persecution and Phrygian Christianity in the century following Constantine, concluding that the territory retained its unique religious character.

There is much to admire here: McKechnie's command of the scholarship, both on Christianity in Asia and on the region generally, is magisterial, and his treatment of the epigraphic evidence is especially impressive. Though he sometimes embarks on flights of speculative fancy (see pp. 204–6), he is otherwise a sober guide and sensible interpreter of the material. However, he is occasionally over-credulous when utilising literary accounts (for example, Eusebius or the Historia Augusta), and could sometimes be more critical of received traditions (such as apostolic succession).

A bigger problem is the framing of the thesis. Although his discussions are compelling, McKechnie's argument emerges implicitly and cumulatively, rather than being explicitly elucidated and signposted. Some may appreciate this, but it means that this can be a frustrating book to dip into (particularly for non-specialists), and, moreover, that chances for serious engagement with the overarching themes – conversion, community, social change (the book's subtitle) – are lost. Related to this are some omissions from an otherwise busy bibliography. For example, although Ramsay MacMullen is liberally cited, nowhere is his Christianizing the Roman Empire (New Haven 1984) referenced, surely MacMullen's most pertinent publication here. It would have been illuminating to see McKechnie's response to that monograph, which explicitly rejected the model of individually charismatic preachers as the impetus behind the expansion of Christianity favoured here. This is symptomatic of a broader lack of top-level theorising found in Christianizing Asia Minor, meaning that it is often left to the reader to fit the argument into the wider landscape on the biggest issues. McKechnie's originality – which is undoubtedly present – is not always clear, and therefore some chapters appear superficial. This is a shame, because the foundations are good, but the reader is never told exactly why the argument is important, or what wider implications the conclusions have for processes of conversion.

Despite these reservations, which will reduce its value for more casual readers and those who do not read it cover-to-cover, Christianizing Asia Minor is an impressive study that will amply reward those who devote to it the time and attention which it deserves.