The eighteen contributors to this book, edited by David Bebbington and David Ceri Jones, explore the extent to which twentieth-century evangelicals in the United Kingdom were fundamentalists. The premise of this volume is that any analysis of fundamentalism must take “social qualities,” such as intolerance and separatism, into serious account alongside “intellectual qualities,” such as theological technique and doctrine (5). Individuals who may appear to be fundamentalists by intellectual criteria were often not fundamentalist in their style, behavior, or self-identification. Two social features commonly associated with fundamentalism—violence and gender roles—are not treated here as essential to the movement. The book pursues the particularity of Christian fundamentalism in the United Kingdom rather than approaching British fundamentalism as an example of a global phenomenon. The contributors argue that while fundamentalism existed in the United Kingdom and overlapped in varying degrees with evangelicalism, the two were not identical phenomenon.

Opening chapters by Geoffrey Treloar and Neil Dickson show that conservative British evangelicals made key contributions to the development of fundamentalism in the early twentieth century, particularly through their participation in the American multivolume project titled The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth (1910–1915). Nevertheless, though these conservative evangelicals shared many affinities with later fundamentalists, they cannot themselves be categorized as such. They were more moderate and less belligerent than either their American counterparts or later fundamentalists of the 1920s.

Andrew Atherstone, Martin Wellings, David Bebbington, and Tim Grass then analyze the presence of fundamentalism among evangelical Anglicans, Methodists, Baptists, and the Brethren respectively during the interwar period. While fundamentalist characteristics, and in some cases outright fundamentalism, were present to varying degrees, these chapters conclude that conservative evangelicalism remained stronger than and distinct from fundamentalism, which never enjoyed the same success or numbers that it did in North America. In each case, the particular British or denominational context determined fundamentalism's weakness.

Two chapters then turn to broader themes across denominations. A chapter on gender by Linda Wilson argues that British fundamentalism was essentially male and communicated a masculine message. However, Wilson uncovers many women who were active in the movement in supporting roles and who adopted fundamentalism's military language as their own. Strikingly, discussion of proper gender roles and domesticity was absent in the fundamentalist publications that Wilson examined. John Maiden explores anti-Catholicism and asserts that it encouraged “fundamentalistic responses” in conservative evangelicalism yet also dampened the actual growth of fundamentalism by bolstering attachment to denominations rather than fueling separatism (167).

Ian Randall and Alister Chapman then examine two of the most influential figures in twentieth-century British evangelicalism: Billy Graham and John Stott. Both scholars conclude that while Graham and Stott had fundamentalist roots, neither deserve the attribution of fundamentalist. Graham developed into an inclusive evangelical with a “generous orthodoxy” while Stott became a moderate evangelical who possessed conservative doctrinal stances but an irenic rather than separatist attitude (191). Derek Tidball and David Goodhew follow the collection's main argument into the later twentieth century by demonstrating that Free Methodism as well as new evangelical-charismatic churches in York are robustly conservative but not fundamentalist, basing this differentiation on these groups' irenic rather than sectarian sensibilities and their avoidance of American-style political debate and confrontation.

Three chapters by Andrew Holmes, Kenneth Roxburgh, and David Ceri Jones consider national variations within Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. Holmes uses a case study of W. P. Nicholson in Ulster to argue that fundamentalism was part of evangelicalism in Northern Ireland but that a popular revivalist tradition received more support than a confrontational and separatist approach. Similarly, Jones shows that Welsh evangelicalism, though conservative and producing a powerful fundamentalist movement under Martyn Lloyd-Jones, also favored revivalism while avoiding “an aggressive counter-cultural quasi-political agenda” and “millennial speculation” (306). In Scotland, as Roxburgh demonstrates, fundamentalism was always limited to a small minority in contrast to the majority's broadly ecumenical version of evangelicalism.

The book closes with three chapters on theology. William Kay explores and acknowledges the fundamentalist tendencies in Pentecostalism yet argues that Pentecostals ultimately diverged from fundamentalists in their theological flexibility. Rob Warner analyzes evangelical statements of faith in search of a middle ground between those who treat fundamentalism as synonymous with evangelicalism and those who have found the labels to be mutually exclusive. Warner proposes instead “a continuum among evangelicals from the undauntedly progressive . . . to the rigorously exclusivist” (344). Stephen Holmes investigates the theological relationships between evangelicalism and fundamentalism. He concludes that rather than differing on substantive doctrinal issues, the two movements differed most in attitude and style.

At its heart, this book is an extended response to the scholars such as James Barr and Harriet Harris, who have argued that conservative evangelicals were intellectually fundamentalist. This book answers that fundamentalism did indeed exist in Britain and that fundamentalist characteristics did emerge in many denominations. Numerous examples of both the intellectual and social traits of fundamentalism can be found in twentieth-century Britain, including rejection of higher criticism, insistence on Biblical inerrancy, creationism, and premillennialism on the intellectual side and militancy and separatism on the social. Yet the book's consensus is that “evangelicals commonly showed a tendency in the direction of fundamentalism without reaching that destination” (370). This argument is made by following George Marsden's suggestion that “A fundamentalist is an evangelical who is angry about something” (116). Attitude, style, and behavior are just as important in identifying fundamentalism as intellectual content. Despite fundamentalizing tendencies, British evangelicals mostly avoided fundamentalist social traits. Many conservative evangelical leaders refused to take part in the fierce campaigns and battles that were common in America.

Moreover, fundamentalist intellectual traits were relatively weak and were never general attributes of British evangelicalism. While the relationship between evangelicalism and fundamentalism seemed sometimes close at the beginning of the century, the dominant pattern after the midcentury was for evangelicals “to eschew and repudiate fundamentalism” (376). This book makes a valuable point in calling for religious movements' social and cultural characteristics to be placed alongside their theology and doctrine. The book also offers a fruitful comparison for Americanists of how fundamentalist tendencies identical to those in North America produced very dissimilar results in a different context.