This ambitious volume takes as its premise the notion that, as editors Martha Frederiks and Dorottya Nagy have it, ‘the rapid popularisation of the World Christianity label seems to have impeded a thorough scrutiny of the methodological implications of such a paradigmatic shift’ (p. 1), and that such methodological scrutiny is therefore well overdue. As such, Frederiks and Nagy place methodology centre stage, and begin the volume by diagnosing several methodological problems concerning the ‘bipolar lines of thinking’ (p. 19), unnuanced modes of categorisation and insufficient attention to context that have begun to plague World Christianity scholarship in recent years. The book's purpose, then, is to sketch the contours of what they term a ‘World Christianity approach’ – a particular multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approach to studying Christianity/ies in past and present characterised by attention to context, interdisciplinarity and the thorough scrutiny of the epistemologies and theoretical underpinnings that govern such work. In other words, the question at the heart of the volume is not so much ‘what is World Christianity?’ – a question which has loomed over much of Brill's Theology and Mission in World Christianity series thus far – but ‘how is such knowledge produced?’

With this question in mind, the book gathers contributions from a great variety of academic backgrounds (the editors list anthropology, religious studies, history, missiology, intercultural studies, theology and patristics) and what results is a self-consciously heterogenous volume with an impressively wide array of approaches, perspectives and disciplines evidenced in its thirteen chapters. The book begins with two chapters from the editors themselves, who each build on the foundations of the argument as laid out in the introductory chapter. Writing from a religious studies perspective, Frederiks critically interrogates current conceptualisations of World Christianity and argues for conceiving of it instead as ‘a cumulative tradition with multiple centres of influence, authority, and power’ (p. 23) which exists as part of ‘an entangled world’ (p. 29) – an entanglement which warrants the methodological dynamism and contextual sensitivity of the ‘World Christianity approach’. Writing in tandem with such conclusions, Nagy proceeds in the following chapter to ‘recall’ the term ‘World Christianity’ itself by means of analysing the implications of the modifier ‘world’ on ‘Christianity’ – a process she terms ‘worlding’ (p. 43). By means of interrogating ‘worldings’ in the adjacent fields of literature, philosophy and history, Nagy argues for an increased attention to the rules of normativity which govern knowledge construction within the field.

With knowledge construction in mind, the next chapter, which comes from Raimundo Barreto, continues to analyse the theoretical foundations of World Christianity. Highlighting contributions from Latin American scholarship, Barreto advocates decoloniality and interculturality as tools for the study of World Christianity which, when applied systematically, may have ‘implications for broader theoretical exchanges in the field’ (p. 86). After this come two historiographical contributions which focus their attention on problems of bias, access and hermeneutics in the usage of sources. Emma Wild-Wood, writing on Protestant missionary sources in sub-Saharan Africa, demonstrates ‘the utility of a comparison of different sorts of missionary writing in order to gain a deeper understanding of … context’, while Joseph Tse-Hei Lee and Christie Chui-Shan Chow, who discuss the challenges of conducting research into Christian communities in China, argue that church historians should ‘pay attention to a wide range of primary sources’, ‘address the question of how the changing religious and political landscape has shaped … the accessibility of archival sources’ and ultimately ‘“go native”, being “on the ground”, observing the congregations upfront and participating in their life’ (pp. 130–1).

The following seven chapters ‘spotlight’, as the editors have it, ‘religiously plural settings and interfaith relations’, and are almost dizzying in their heterogeneity, presenting as they do a remarkably wide range of subjects, contributors and methods. S. Wesley Ariarajah begins the series in chapter vi by examining not only how Christianity has impacted religious and cultural traditions, and vice-versa, but, building on the work of Enrique Dussel, goes further by analysing how inter-religious encounter has both challenged and enriched Christian theology itself. After this comes a study on Thai Christianity by Kari Storstein Haug in which she analyses both ‘how Thai Christians reflect on their faith in light of … the religious context in which they are situated’ and ‘how to create knowledge about this reflective practice and theologising’ (p. 158). Storstein Haug's contribution is followed by a study of interreligious dialogue by Douglas Pratt. Noting that World Christianity itself indicates a ‘consciousness of belonging to a worldwide Christian oikoumene’, Pratt analyses the work of both the World Council of Churches and the Vatican, and argues that the study of such institutions, which exhibit ‘multiple ways of relating to the religious other … should constitute a key feature of a World Christianity approach’ (p. 200).

With worldwide consciousnesses in mind, Lucien van Liere in the following chapter provides a case study of the representations of the beheadings of twenty-one migrant workers in January 2015 by Islamic State's ‘Tripoli Province’, and analyses the role thereby of discursive regularities in ‘constructing frames of global religious connectivities’ (p. 204) through the contrasting discursive ‘frames’ of ‘crusader’ versus ‘martyr’. Following this, Corey L. Williams focuses on the Egungun festival in Yorubaland in his chapter, and articulates the notion of a ‘religious field’ as a methodological contribution to debates in World Christianity scholarship (p. 227). Such a field, as he argues, provides ‘a more comprehensive understanding … that prioritises everyday lived religious experience’ (p. 246). In a delightfully unexpected turn, the next chapter takes us from the Egungun festival to a study of Augustine's De haeresibus, in which Paul J. J. van Geest provides a thought experiment involving temporarily decoupling Augustine's work from orthodoxy per se, and reading his work in the light of the ‘contextual connectivities’ in which it was written (p. 7). The fruit of such an experiment, as van Geest explains, is that ‘the plurality of Christianity is … incontrovertibly [made] clear in Augustine's De haeresibus’ (p. 267), which Frederiks and Nagy claim ‘evidences that a World Christianity approach can be fruitful for the study of both contemporary and past Christianity/ies’ (p. 7), a claim which some readers may find warrants further scrutiny. The final contribution comes from Stanley John who, analysing ‘new generation’ churches in Kerala, questions the validity of typological categories developed in North America in describing such churches, and concludes that the utility of any such category ‘must be discerned by its ability adequately to describe local phenomenon’ (p. 289). A concluding chapter, entitled ‘Convergences’, follows this, in which Frederiks and Nagy discuss how the methods and perspectives presented throughout the volume might converge in ‘operationalising a World Christianity approach’ (p. 7).

Both the ambition of this volume (‘to rewrite the history of Christianity from a wider, more inclusive, multi-centred perspective’) and the sheer heterogeneity of the contributions gathered therein may cause some readers to find it somewhat nebulous and unwieldy in practice. However, not only do Frederiks and Nagy charge the reader to view this heterogeneity as an essential feature of the World Christianity approach that they advocate – demonstrating as it does the dynamism and flexibility required fully to engage with the subject – but they are also emphatic in their conviction that this volume's purpose is not to present a fait accompli, but rather to stimulate practitioners both within and without the field to consider how knowledge of Christianity/ies both past and present is produced, and in this endeavour they have undoubtedly been successful. What results is an invaluable contribution to contemporary debates concerning World Christianity, and one that will surely stimulate much engagement.