It is not easy to be sure of the impact in Britain of the bicentennial commemoration in 2007 of the abolition of the slave trade. That impact there was is made clear in this volume, based on a conference, also in 2007, on Black theology and slavery. Hardly less dispiriting for Anthony Reddie than a national service in Westminster Abbey ‘symptomatic of a flawed theology of atonement and a specious equality in the body of Christ motif’, was the reaction of Black attendees to the service's interruption by Black activist Toyin Agbetu: ‘studied silence’ and ‘conformist inertia’. Published here are in some senses, then, echoes, or reverberations, of that protest. The mood is strongly religious, with many influences apparent, the Bible certainly but also works of history (notably of the Caribbean, and also of Africa); music and film – and lived experience. There are reflections not merely on slavery and race but also on gender and sexuality, and on faith. Some contributions have an ‘academic’ feel: they reveal study of and engagement with a range of texts and sources. Others are quite subjective and in addition are formulaic and repetitive in their citations. Some contributors are ambivalent or hostile towards ‘academic’ convention or influence. As editor, Reddie has seemingly allowed his contributors to set the tone and pace, content for his own part to ignore what he describes as the Academy's ‘spurious claims to objectivity and neutrality’. That is all to the good, up to a point. Much of what is here is lively and provocative. But the origins, growth and influence of Black theology in Britain surely merit further critical study, by others unconnected with the movement. In its range and variety, this book is a stimulating if uneven read. It is also informative, less perhaps about Black theology, than about what certain people think Black theology to mean. That meaning, it seems, may be defined in part by reference to the Bible and to biblical hermeneutics, in part by history and by individual and shared Black experience. In large measure it must surely also be defined in terms oppositional to what Reddie terms ‘White hegemony … within the ecclesia or beyond it in wider society’. On this evidence, Black theology in Britain has a restless quality. And for all the variety of its contributions, the book shows thereby its editor's influence. Reddie has long been engaged, with others, in reinterpreting Christianity in the context of Black experiences in Britain and in its empire, be these historic or contemporary. In the process, continued here, he has subjected to examination and even criticism not ‘white hegemony’ alone but also those Black Christians less aware than he would have them be of certain vital things, not least the slave trade's continuing relevance to their lives and the lives of others, abolition and its bicentennial commemoration notwithstanding.