These two volumes provide the last pillars of what is now a substantial monument of collective research and writing. As there was an Oxford series on the history of Anglicanism, so this new odyssey, surveying the myriad histories of Protestant Dissenting traditions, shows that the Anglicans have again demonstrated their ability to provoke alternatives. But if the Oxford History of Anglicanism struggled valiantly to achieve denominational coherence in four, persevering volumes this new enterprise begins with an avowal of diversity, for no such ambitions haunt the mind, or the method, of the historian of Protestant Dissent. As the editors remark at the outset, ‘those whose minds crave tidiness should abandon all hope before entering here’. The perils of achieving a viable terminology are certainly formidable: the term Dissent itself remains something in need of constant adjustment, or qualification, and here it is variously Dissent, dissent or even (D)issent. The word ‘traditions’ also begs at least a few questions: the purposeful achievement of a solid denominationalism, which meant so much to Dissenting Protestants in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, is treated very lightly here and is certainly not adopted as an organising principle. Perhaps this is unsurprising, and even appropriate: where denominational identity had once been so highly prized the gulf between liberals and conservative Evangelicals came, in the end, to matter most of all. By the late years of the century, Jehu J. Hanciles observes, ‘the Protestant dissenting tradition had become fully globalized, highly diversified and increasingly multi-directional in its impact’. What it came to reveal was the ‘inherently intercultural, emphatically contextual, and ultimately pluralistic dynamics of Christianity as a world religion’ (p. 16). Not least for such reasons these two books represent a bold, even ambitious, enterprise.

In both volumes, Protestant Dissent is exposed to the many stresses and strains of colonialism, post-colonialism, modernity and globalisation. Much here is defined by a determination to balance an old geography with a new one. Dissenting Protestantism was ever a distinctive, creative, element in the complicated textures of migration which redefined the world at large. Almost everywhere in the twentieth century new forms of Dissent soon outgrew the many establishments which an earlier Nonconformity had achieved and often openly repudiated them. What had been exported across the world by ‘a vast army of Dissenting missionaries’ (vol. iv. 4) was hardly likely to solidify and endure long in its proffered forms – indeed, it was only logical that the Dissenting pattern should continue to replicate itself. The immensities of context and time soon refashioned, or overcame altogether, much that was once inherited. In the old heartlands much simply perished, quietly and sadly. What prospered elsewhere bore little comparison indeed with what had first ventured there. We very soon encounter the tremendous flourishing of a New Dissent, of Pentecostals and Charismatics, evangelistic campaigns, megachurches, even ‘Hyperchurches’. Who, under such circumstances, was to know what now possessed the distinctive identity of the ‘tradition’, or judge what Barry Ensign-George calls (in a very brief paragraph on patterns of ministry) ‘malformation’? (vol. v. 316–17). There be other ways to discern the integrities of Protestant Dissent. In volume v Mark P. Hutchinson and Candy Gunther Brown boldly suggest that what identified the Protestant Dissenting traditions was not a belief but a method (p. 17). Dissent had once prospered in preaching a gospel of righteousness in the compromised landscapes of political power; in the Anglophone West it could still be discerned in popular protest movements, ‘modernist communitarianism’, ‘pacifist reformism’. But how much of this impulse was also lost in translation to new worlds? If there was a sense here of a desire to reform society itself, or speak truth to power, it does not feature much. The predatory dictators of post-colonial Africa appear to have had very little indeed to fear from Protestant Dissent.

The two volumes marshal no less than thirty-two scholars from twelve countries. The weight leans heavily towards to the universities and colleges of North America, sometimes by migration or by visiting positions of various kinds. Looking towards contemporaneity naturally elicits the labours not only of historians but of scholars who ply their trades variously, as anthropologists, missiologists, sociologists, theologians, scholars of World Christianity and contemporary Christianity, ethnography and even New Testament studies. If, in certain ways, the differences in approach here are obvious that might prove a stimulus and be no bad thing. Yet it is impossible for a historian of politics and society not to sense that a good deal goes missing, not least in a determination to cover vast expanses of time and space. Moreover, some of the jargon may cause an ecclesiastical historian to shift uneasily in the comfortable armchair of empiricism. But a reviewer should beware of doubting too easily. The basic question is whether these two books provide the reader with a significant and useful body of historical writing about Protestantism which develops what has come before and achieves a new, fruitful result.

In many respects the two volumes do not quite complement each other, but they do belong together. Jehu J. Hanciles writes that the purpose of volume iv is to offer ‘detailed snapshots of Protestant Dissent as a globalizing movement’ (p. 1). This is certainly helpful. This volume is effectively cast in regional terms, looking to Africa, then to Asia and the Middle East, then to America and Europe, Latin America and the Pacific. If there is a dominant theme at work in this it is a reckoning with the ways in which post-colonial Churches extricated themselves from the paternalism and assorted patterns of the European missions. In Africa this comes to involve a discussion of translation and indigenisation and the exploration of a good deal of charismatic independence. Such patterns recur elsewhere, but in their own distinct forms, not least with a whole chapter devoted to the Yoido Full Gospel Church in South Korea and another (excellent) one on the independent Protestantism of Ottoman Syria. In a third section, on America and Europe, the contest between liberalism and a new conservatism in ‘mainline’ Protestantism receives thoughtful attention as both of them confront the powers of consumerism. Patterns of decline (addressed explicitly in a sociological discussion called ‘Dissent by default’) hover over much here. In Latin America, meanwhile, lines of inheritance and change across the continent are traced in two articles, while Methodism and Pentecostalism in Chile provoke particular attention. Two chapters on the Pacific turn to further patterns of localisation and indigenisation before an examination of Methodism in Fiji and Tonga.

Volume v is essentially an accumulation of thematic essays in which geography might be a defining feature, or simply one among others. Here there is no bold division into sections and no obvious pattern of order. The insistence on ‘globalised settings’ is affirmed at the outset and a division is marked between the Anglophone world and the majority world. Much is concerned with mission. The busy editor contributes three chapters himself and although his titles may seem obscure to many historians, they turn out to contain much of substance and insight. Elsewhere, ‘received spiritualities’ encounter Modernity while Dissent confronts politics (in the Anglophone world). There follow explorations of Protestant readings of the Bible, preaching (Anglophone and then in the Global South), ‘emergent and adaptive spiritualities’, ‘Glocalised and Indigenised theologies’; a discussion of changing patterns in ministry; a presentation of Dissent as something ‘manufactured’ and ‘reflexive’; an exploration of literature in ‘Missionary imaginations’ and a discussion of the intersections of gender and race; ‘Mission, evangelism and translation: from the West to elsewhere’, ‘From reverse to inverse omni-nodal Dissenting Protestant mission’; and, finally, a confrontation with the new world of mass communication and ‘new technologies’. Justin D. Livingstone's discussion of ‘Missionary imaginations’ is splendidly done but, at large, the cultural claims of Protestant Dissent are few and far between. A productive genius for hymnody appears to have evaporated while there is little evidence that these traditions contributed to wider public discourse or aesthetics. Arguably, what is at stake in all of this reveals a great deal about the trajectories of twentieth-century church history altogether. Was it perhaps the case that in a secular, globalised world, driven by hectic patterns of material production, choice and consumption, Christians of all kinds had eventually become, in one way or another, Dissenters?

Books like these often represent academic empires of a kind. In this case the achievement is certainly along Habsburg lines. The brave editors have done valiantly to make the enterprise work as well as it does – and so, indeed, have the authors, for there is certainly some committed writing here. If the principal object is to incite the reader to reflect it is surely met, and often on generous terms. But the sense of breadth remains daunting, for there is always so much ground to acknowledge and much interior complexity remains silent beneath the surface. How well do the overarching perspectives and priorities stand up? Those who approach both volumes harbouring some conventional assumptions and expectations, not least those emanating from the old geography, may well be disappointed. Across both volumes the interest in issues of Christian mission proves pervasive while the emphasis on Pentecostalism is exceedingly heavy. The great investment in ecumenical movements of all kinds, or in international denominational ones, is surely under-represented. If there is rather little on the Protestant Dissenting traditions of India is this because they founded new Churches with Anglicans and so ceased to qualify? Meanwhile, great names are kept firmly in their place; some merit barely a mention, others simply do not turn up at all. Because of the structures of the two books and, sometimes, because of the titles of the chapters themselves, the indices may well become important to readers. It is not often clear where someone may turn up.

It must be acknowledged that scholarship itself is relatively young in many of the chosen areas of study. But there are many rich, and rewarding, excavations here and much of value has been accomplished, even if it is not always clear how it might actually be used. Moreover, for all the grandiosity of such an enterprise, the claims of the editors are sensitively judged and attractively modest. There is no intention to produce some ostensibly definitive work of reference; more a sense of contributing to an academic conversation and even of trying out a few new approaches, to see what the response might be. For nothing here is settled; everything is open to discussion; and everything is still changing around us.