This volume, from a series by the Oxfordshire Record Society, collects responses to Anglican bishop Charles Gore's request for information from his clergy in the Oxford diocese. Luckily for church historians, these “visitations” took the form of a questionnaire sent to each parish, which was filled out and returned, and give a sense of individual clergymen's voices. Focusing on pastoral care, education, and the nature of worship, the records provide a snapshot on either side of World War I of the ecclesiastical life of the rural Church of England.

Editor Mark Smith provides a plethora of useful contextual information for the researcher, including a diocesan map of Oxfordshire parishes, short biographical information about all respondents, and a well-balanced introduction. Smith takes an evenhanded approach in this introduction, giving readers historical background to early twentieth-century Anglicanism and the diocese itself, while also walking them through the various questions asked by Gore. The inclusion of demographic information in particular allows for a more nuanced understanding of the sometimes-limited view presented in the returns.

The archival material itself is often fascinating, if also often repetitive. These glimpses of parish life centered around the Great War can provide insight into English social and religious existence during a tumultuous period. Responses to questions about sacramentality, service attendance, and the provision of education for Dissenters (occasionally including Roman Catholics and Jews) in particular paint a picture of a world and a denomination in flux. As with any archive, there are several large grains of salt necessary when considering the returns as historical sources. As Smith notes, the Oxford diocese was not typical. Far more rural than most English dioceses, it also was significantly more Anglo-Catholic than most—not surprising given the presence of Oxford University in its midst—even in this period of relative Anglo-Catholic ascendancy. Further, the temptation to use the returns as alternative, “man on the spot” demographic sources is tempered somewhat by the cagey nature of at least some of the responses. Particularly when asked about community members not of their flock, many vicars seem to have resorted to either a know-nothing attitude or a stereotypical waspish, gossipy nature straight out of a country novel of manners.

While neither inspires confidence in the numbers, there is a useful humanization of low-level clergy in a period often dominated by studies of high-level theological and ecclesiastical politics. Altogether, The Parish in Wartime will be of use to researchers working on the social and religious history of the home front as well as the development of Anglicanism in the twentieth century.