Joseph Byrnes's engaging new study is a welcome addition to the literature on religion and the French Revolution. Byrnes treats famous clerics such as Sieyès, Grégoire and Lamourette alongside lesser-known figures. He prefers to speak of ‘priests of the French Revolution’ or ‘constitutionals’ rather than ‘revolutionary priests’, since oath-taking clerics differed in their levels of revolutionary commitment. While acknowledging a debt to scholars of the revolutionary Church such as Rodney Dean, Bernard Plongeron and Timothy Tackett, Byrnes's book is not a statistical prosopography in the model of Tackett's Religion, revolution and regional culture in France (1986). He is more interested in tracing the interior struggles of a smaller number of clerics. Modelling himself after John McManners, he writes with deep empathy for his subjects; he wants to study their ‘religious attitudes and psychological experiences’ (p. xvii). He focuses on their shared efforts to reconcile their priestly vocations with changing political circumstances, and their transition – in some cases – from idealism to violence. He aims to understand these priests ‘precisely as priests, on the premise that their priestly commitment … is the primary explanation of their behavior’ (p. xvii). Part i discusses the priests’ years of ‘Engagement’ in the Revolution from 1789 to 1791, while part ii follows their ‘Survival’ from 1791 to 1795. Part iii examines their ‘revival’ of the Church from 1795 through the Concordat, to 1802. Part i traces the intellectual and theological evolution of several priests from the Old Regime through the early years of the Revolution, highlighting their individual visions for reform and their varying experiences. Part ii is particularly helpful in highlighting the constitutionals’ struggle to reconcile their commitments to egalitarianism with the violence of the Terror. Byrnes also explains the motivations of those who abdicated their clerical vows (‘abdicataires’). Part iii is perhaps the book's most valuable section, since it focuses on the somewhat neglected topic of the revival of the Church between 1795 and 1801. Byrnes examines the ill-fated efforts of the ‘United Bishops’, led by Grégoire, Clément and others, to create a Christian republic, inside and outside the Church. He notes that while their hopes were dashed by Napoleon's Concordat with the pope, their values endured in Gallican Catholicism through to the Second Vatican Council. At times, Byrnes over-identifies the Revolution with its violence, and he makes too clear-cut a contrast between the morality of clerical and secular revolutionaries (for instance the caption at p. 110). It would have been beneficial for him to engage with the recent literature on revolutionary virtue by Marisa Linton, J. Kent Wright and others. Readers might also wish to know the data sources for his statistical maps. Nevertheless, Byrnes is to be congratulated for his achievement in highlighting the theological and political diversity of these clerics who are too often treated as a single group, and in conveying the challenges that they faced in maintaining their identities as priests amidst a decade of turbulence.