This book is part of a welcome recent trend for historians of religion to consider the relationship between Christianity and the ‘natural’ world. Recent research has stressed the co-construction of faith and the natural world, variously referred to as the landscape, environment or nature. Here Terje Oestigaard explores the uses of water throughout the Reformation and ‘rise of capitalism’, focusing mainly on England. Taking issue with Weber's disenchantment thesis, Oestigaard argues for the continued significance of water in reformed Christianity as a sacramental, as part of the baptismal rite and as an indicator of divine grace or displeasure. In the final chapter he draws these arguments together explicitly to challenge the disenchantment thesis, concluding that the ‘water cult’ persisted in the face of both capitalism and Protestantism (p. 166). Oestigaard approaches the subject and the period anthropologically. This is one of the great strengths of the work, but also one of its weaknesses. Oestigaard's anthropological approach is particularly effective when typologising the variety of ways in which water is represented in the Bible (p. 12), and in his close reading of religious practices. Bible passages are however too often quoted purely as evidence for early modern mentalités without full consideration of their various historical understandings. Throughout, the book is peppered with overly deductive reasoning about early modern faith from Bible passages and the author's interpretation of the logic of confessional theologies. Capitalism in the title refers to Weber's disenchantment thesis, which is addressed through an analysis of the changing role of water in lay religious practice in the pre-industrial era. This is a somewhat tangential way of analysing the rise of capitalism, and one wonders whether there are more direct ways of addressing the trifecta of water, Christianity and capitalism, particularly considering the quality of the under-exploited textual record of early modern water resource management. The book is largely a work of synthesis, and Oestigaard relies heavily on other authors' readings of primary source material. He uses much of Keith Thomas's evidence from Religion and the decline of magic yet comes to different conclusions – namely that the continuing significance of water in lay religious practice demonstrates no clear ‘disenchantment’ of the world. The bibliography passes over a great deal of recent scholarship that has tested and nuanced Thomas's reading of Weber's disenchantment thesis. Most striking is the omission of any of Alexandra Walsham's recent research into providence, holy wells and the ‘reformation of the landscape’. References to research by Christian Rohr and Michael Kempe into the religious aspects of medieval and early modern flooding would also have enhanced the discussion of floods as ‘God's punishments’. Also omitted is any mention of the richly symbolic cover image, Adriaen van der Venne's Fishing for souls (1614). In sum, Water, Christianity and the rise of capitalism highlights the need for a greater historical understanding of the role of water in religious and economic change, but often through what it lacks rather than what it presents.