This superb study displays E. Brooks Holifield's continued mastery of the broadly focused but carefully researched general survey (earlier notable efforts include A history of pastoral care in America, 1983; Health and medicine in the Methodist tradition, 1986; and Theology in America, 2003). With its careful attention to major developments in the larger culture as well as the Churches, this book moves briskly from the first Spanish, French and English ministers in the American colonies to the multitude of conflicts, opportunities and challenges that have marked the ministry in the very recent past (the scale of change canvassed here is suggested by the fact that in the early twenty-first century there are more pastors of Korean churches in the United States than there were pastors of all Churches when the nation came into existence in the 1780s). But Holifield's precise prose, the surpassing breadth of his research in primary sources and secondary authorities, and the carefully chosen vignettes that sprinkle the narrative transform what could have been a weary chronicle into a monograph full of useful information and sparkling with interpretive insight. It is particularly noteworthy that Holifield integrates fully the history of Catholic priests into this account, and also that he patiently attends to the ways in which African-American ministers have sometimes reflected but also often diverged from broader Protestant patterns. In his rendering, the major external events affecting the practice of ministry were the colonial origins of the Christian Churches, the impact of revivalism from the 1740s, the denominational pluralism that led to the separation of Church and State in the Revolutionary era, the enduring American clash between professional aspiration and populist levelling, the surges of immigrants with their multitudes of Churches, the end of slavery that allowed African-Americans to form their own Churches, the enduring division between theological liberals and conservatives that has marked the last 110 years, the civil rights movement and religious politicisation in the post-World War II period, and the cultural conflicts over war, gender, sexual orientation and economic inequality of the recent past. Holifield describes ministerial authority in America as consistently involving charisma conveyed by office, status gained by personal achievement and standing conveyed by reasonable persuasion – but in a nearly infinite variety of combinations. He includes much material on ministerial salaries (usually lower than other professions, but not always), about tensions between the ministry as a vocation and as a profession, and from the aggregate data accumulated by many surveys made during the last century. His scrupulously fair treatment of the Churches, theologies, ministerial styles, triumphs and scandals that make up this history includes light-handed, but effective, commentary. Most important is his claim that the American case confirms a general reality: ‘the Christian ministry will always be in crisis’ (p. 9) because it operates at the paradoxical intersection of the Christian injunction to be in the world and the Christian imperative to leave the world behind.