These contributions from a conference sponsored by the Dr. Williams's Center for Dissenting Studies, cover (for the most part) the geographical, denominational and theological breadth, as well as the temporal extent, of British nonconformity. In one way or another, the focus of each chapter is the movement's pre-eminent defining characteristic (apart from its principled opposition to the established church): scripture as “a Christian's only rule of faith and practice” (1). Given the variety of faith and practice discussed, we should not be surprised if John Evans's 1795 criterion was not always fully honored—or even similarly understood—by all those usually grouped under the designation of protestant dissent. Nevertheless, what the volume so well documents is a remarkable three-century homage to the centrality of scripture, wide-ranging in theory and practice as it may have been, in these non-established churches.

The editors' fine introduction is an auspicious beginning. Much more than the usual brief preview of a collection's “coming (scholarly) attractions,” they have produced a substantive and significant essay that could easily stand on its own, while still deftly indicating how subsequent chapters add to the existing conversation. Most helpfully they remind us of the various hermeneutical tensions within dissent. Though these denominations “shared experiences of deprivation, persecution, and then contested toleration,” they nevertheless often differed “in theology and particularly ecclesiology” (4). Their shared single-minded focus on scripture indeed seems to have covered a multitude of interpretative approaches, many of them highlighted in this collection. Among the various factors: different translations, manuscript sources and views of canonicity; well-entrenched theological systems (for example, the work of the Westminster Assembly or the Bible-based belief of some Quakers and evangelicals that the Holy Spirit still speaks directly to believers); regional ethnic cultures; differing conceptions of, and regard for, formal learning and scholarship; gendered roles (sometimes contested); an appreciation of allies from beyond the dissenting traditions; and a gradual inclusion and acceptance within British public and academic life.

The ten chapters proceed in roughly chronological order, beginning with Mandelbrote's discussion of family Bible-reading, largely fashioned by the father-and-son team of Philip and Matthew Henry around the turn of the eighteenth century. Methodism is then brought into the mix as Phyllis Mack and David Wilson examine “Mary Fletcher's Bible,” the female preacher's use of scripture in defense of her vocation, in confirmation of an experiential “heart religion”—and indeed as a source for inculcating Christianity, not only to Methodist classes, but to at least one Anglican congregation. Simon Mills follows with an account of developing Unitarianism in which Nathaniel Lardner, Joseph Priestly, and Thomas Belsham each in turn employed scripture against orthodox creeds and articles and in support of liberal religion. Nonconformity's impressive growth in nineteenth-century Wales, according to Eryn White, may not be totally traceable to “Dissent, the Bible, and the Welsh language” (111), but they all play a role, especially if we grant Welsh Anglicans a little credit and add in the efficient exploitation of print culture (via Welsh Bibles, commentaries, catechisms, Sunday School materials, and such classics as Pilgrim's Progress). The writings of a succession of high Calvinist dissenters from the 1780s to 1850 are mined by Ian J. Shaw to demonstrate the expected theologically informed reading of scripture; surprisingly, however, this branch of dissent also found biblical warrant for robust expressions of social concern and political commentary. A particularly interesting essay by Timothy Larsen compares three nineteenth-century women who arguably inhabited the fringes of dissent (Quaker prison reformer Elizabeth Fry, Unitarian education crusader Mary Carpenter, and Catherine Booth, co-founder of the Salvation Army)—all of them influential women and deeply steeped in and motivated by scripture. Andrew Holmes argues that “Common Sense Realism,” so influential in North American evangelicalism, also exerted important influence on Presbyterian biblical approaches in nineteenth-century Ulster—including a conservative response to German biblical criticism. Michael Ledger-Lomas adds an essay illustrating how the “orientalizing study of the Bible” (i.e., interpreting it through the present-day ethnographic and topographical reports that were increasingly accumulating) helped Victorian evangelical nonconformists maintain a postmillennial optimism about changing the world, as well as engage positively with German hermeneutics. Colin Kidd and Valerie Wallace patiently disentangle the roles of biblical criticism, sectarianism, and personality that complicated interdenominational relations in late nineteenth-century Scotland, finding that, ultimately (and oddly, for a bunch of Calvinists!) matters of polity trumped theological considerations in the Free Church of Scotland's movement toward early twentieth-century reunion with the Kirk. The volume concludes somewhat somberly, given the energetic focus dissent had given sola scriptura prior to the twentieth century, with S. J. D. Green's study of the “decline of popular biblicism” in the work of sociologist (and Quaker chocolate heir) Seebohm Rowntree in 1951, a study which seems to have predicted protestant England's declension, if not demise.

The volume is thoroughly researched, clearly written, and wide-ranging within its topic. It is surely not a chargeable offense to level at this excellent group of scholars (brought together with an explicit focus on Dissenting Studies), but there would be value in exploring the Bible's role outside of traditional dissent: Roman Catholics, various sorts of Anglicans, as well as the more outlying sorts of “nonconformists” (e.g., various Commonwealth era sectarians, followers of Boehme and Swedenborg, Latter Day Saints, pentecostals, even Jews, Muslims, adherents of Afrocentric religions and other post-colonial imports and New Religious Movements). One of the authors, Timothy Larsen, has already pioneered this broader approach in A People of One Book: The Bible and the Victorians (New York: Oxford, 2011), including even atheists and agnostics in his account (though space requirements limited what he could add on Jews, Plymouth Brethren, and Spiritualists).

Whether narrowly or broadly construed, the enterprise is worthy. All thanks and praise to the editors and authors of Dissent and the Bible for beginning the conversation and setting high standards for anyone wishing to join in.