This wide-ranging overview of Christianity in the twentieth century aims to be both global and ecumenical. Brian Stanley is entirely successful in the first of these objectives and largely successful in the second. So far as the ecumenical is concerned, Stanley begins by declaring that his perspective is that of an Evangelical Protestant, but that he aims to do justice to all branches of Christianity. He is clearly most at home with the many forms of Evangelicalism, but there is a chapter and a half on Orthodoxy, Roman Catholics play a major part in several chapters and Liberal Protestants also appear, often in passing, in several others. Stanley makes no claim to be comprehensive and he eschews any kind of chronological sequence. He begins with World War I which, he argues, confirmed existing trends, rather than being a source of change in itself. He then picks fourteen themes and builds each chapter round the playing out of these themes in two contrasting parts of the world. In most chapters the focus is either on the interaction between Christianity and politics, or on mission and the geographical patterns of Christian growth or decline. While granting the extent of Christian decline both in parts of Europe and in some Muslim-majority countries, he is sceptical of the ‘secularisation thesis’. And while he highlights the increasing importance of the ‘Global South’ in modern Christianity, he rejects the view that Christianity's ‘future’ lies in ‘the South’. Speaking globally, he argues, the twentieth century was the greatest century of conversion to Christianity, and he provides detailed accounts of growth in West Africa, Melanesia and Korea. He also highlights the complications arising from migration, whether in Europe and North America or in south-east Asia. He highlights the contrasts in Christianity's political role. Christians have played important parts in resistance to oppressive governments, but he also investigates the contributions of Christians to ethnic hatred and genocide in Germany and Rwanda. He suggests that the greatest failure of twentieth-century Christians was their frequent embrace of ethnocentrism, racism or sanctification of the nation. Interestingly, he predicts that the most dangerous temptation in the twenty-first century may be acceptance of the Prosperity Gospel preached by many Pentecostal Churches.

The book's structure has both strengths and limitations. It is ideally suited for teaching. Each chapter would provide an excellent starting-point for one of a series of seminars, with reading on other examples being added. On the other hand, it does not work so well for anyone intending to read right through. There is no overarching narrative or connecting thread, though Stanley provides a summing up at the end. Some of the chapters are over-tightly packed with factual information. For me, the chapters that work best are those which keep the argument to the fore. Not surprisingly, since Stanley is a leading authority in that field, one of the best chapters is on ‘pathways of conversion’. In explaining the huge growth of Christianity in Africa in the twentieth century, he recognises but relativises the lead role which traditional narratives gave to colonialism and missionaries. He stresses not only the importance of translations of the Bible into local languages, but also the fact that translation often took a considerable time. In particular, he highlights the key role of indigenous prophets and healers, often acting independently of, or even in opposition to the missionaries. He also emphasises the fact that the fastest growth of Christianity has taken place since the end of the colonial era. One of the most interesting chapters is that on Germany and Rwanda. He makes some significant general points about the frequent over-closeness of twentieth-century Churches to particular movements or governments and the fact that ‘liberation theologies’ may be especially prone to this danger, because of their zeal for justice and their tendency to believe that this can only be achieved through a particular political movement. He sees an example of this in the championing of the Hutu and the voicing of their grievances by many Catholic clergy in Rwanda, and also in the readiness of German clergy to speak of the Germans as a people oppressed, whether by the allies or by ‘the Jews’. He quotes Adrian Hastings, who wrote that Christians in politics ‘need a very strong sense of sin, of the power of evil in the world’. Stanley is in no way advocating abstention from politics – and he notes that the mainly apolitical German Free Churches tended to be accepting of the Nazis. So the question remains open as to how Christians can be politically active and effective while not falling prey to the temptations which Stanley spells out.

Stanley aims to provide an analysis which is well-balanced and avoids polemics, and to a large extent he succeeds. He is ready to nuance each generalisation by providing counter-examples. The partial exception is in his treatment of Liberal Christians. He makes the legitimate criticisms that Liberals have tended to be over-optimistic about the prospects for human progress and to attach insufficient importance to evangelism. But it seems tendentious to blame a large part of Christian complicity with the Nazis on ‘Liberal Protestant ideological approximation to Nazi views of race and the Volk’ (p. 163): conservative theologians, such as Paul Althaus, were at least as likely as their liberal colleagues to be attracted to the more militant forms of German nationalism, including support for the Nazis. The chapter on the recent debates over the ordination of women and of gays and lesbians is disappointing in that opposition to change is presented as guided by strong theological principles, while support for change is seen simply as rooted in principles of individual human rights and ‘accommodation to intellectual trends in the surrounding culture’ (p. 287). There is no discussion of the theological basis of the proposed reforms or, in the case of debates over the place of women in the Church, of the fact that, far from originating with contemporary feminism, they go back to the later nineteenth century and beyond.

These reservations notwithstanding, this is an impressive achievement and is likely to remain a standard work for many years to come.