Martin Greschat, well-known writer on contemporary German ecclesiastical history, embeds a portrayal of post-war west German Protestantism firmly in the political history of the era. Theological developments are not discussed in detail. The book focuses on the variety of elite-level Protestant responses to topics such as the rearming of Germans, the perceived threat of nuclear weaponry, environmentalism, relations with the former German territories in eastern Europe and the socio-cultural changes following the student unrest of 1968. It appears that at times individual leaders knew that they did not represent grassroots opinion in their own Churches while giving their time and attention to political matters. The various political campaigns discussed in the book ironically helped to bring about a situation where bureaucratic hierarchies, including the wealthy ecclesiastical hierarchies wedded to, and feeding off, the bourgeois German state, are rejected as anachronistic, or even destructive. Two quotes from towering ecclesiastical figures in the early post-war period thus appear equally valid and pertinent today. The Volkskirche, which long ago became a Church without a people, is still ‘ripe for demolition’ (Martin Niemöller). It is so because it is still ‘unrepentant’ (Karl Barth). Why, one wonders, have well over 100,000 educated Germans turned their backs on Protestantism every year since 1970? To take just one example: the Westphalian Church, of which Greschat is an ordained minister, lost roughly 20 per cent of its membership between 1980 and 2005. Greschat provides no analysis of this seismic shift. The political disagreements and bickering among the leaders of the provincial Churches and ecclesiastical umbrella organisations may well have been one of the key reasons, alongside the ideologies of secularism and individualism, why German Protestantism – in eastern as well as in western Germany – has been bleeding to death for over a generation. Have clergy and parishioners not prayed enough perhaps, or loved enough, to use the words of the Stuttgart declaration of 1945? The book ends on a most sombre note, with the latest batch of church leaders looking for direction. A return to biblical practices – especially Word-centred expository preaching – will certainly have to become a factor in any reversal of the trend; organisational tinkering and the implementation of business ideology are unlikely to stop Protestantism's demise. Significantly, neither the landeskirchliche Gemeinschaften nor the charismatic movement – the very groups that still do mission in the traditional non-political sense of the word – are mentioned. Were Greschat not so dismissive of, or uninterested in, Evangelicals he might have discovered vibrant, growing communities within the Protestant family which do indeed incarnate the hope and confidence so lacking today in mainstream German Protestantism. Greschat's book is a history of the failure of Protestant elites to grow their Churches and to shape public opinion and policy, reflecting their loss of moral and spiritual authority in society during the period in question. It is a welcome addition to the series which will appeal especially to students with an interest in politics.