While other recent works on the new evangelization sometimes prioritize one perspective over others, this anthology aims to offer a bird's-eye view of recent trends in reflection upon the new evangelization by authors with an eye for the centrality of the council's influence upon the church's mission. The fifteen informative essays in this book originated as presentations for a June 2012 conference, “Vatican II, 50 Years On: The New Evangelization,” held at Leeds Trinity University, UK. The text notes key intersections between the council and the new evangelization at the level of discourse while weighing adherence to the council's vision within numerous contextualized illustrations of the new evangelization in action. The text would best serve a graduate theology or ministry class or library, especially in mission and church studies.

Kim introduces the fifteen essays by church leaders and theologians, including Americans Francis George and Susan Wood. She mentions that the book's four parts emerge from the Thirteenth Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops in October 2012: “Vatican II and the New Evangelization,” “The Church of the New Evangelization,” “The New Evangelization in Context,” and “Practising the New Evangelization,” in a British context. Grogan concludes the book with an urgent call to take up the beauty of both the apostolic tradition and the contemporary church's “insignificant,” that is, humble, vitality. Lastly, a detailed bibliography and index offer the beginner a helpful mapping of the new evangelization in its wider theological context.

In the first two parts of the book, the authors address Vatican II's shaping of the missionary church through several questions: How can the new evangelization be both a proclaiming and a listening impulse among people of other faiths? To what extent ought there be concern for consistent content through the catechism amid the new evangelization? Have there been “fragmentations and distortions” of the original message that need to be remedied? Of particular note in the first part of the book is Tracy Rowland's illuminating discussion of threats to the new evangelization, including a temptation to reduce it to a marketing agenda. Susan Wood highlights how both the council and the new evangelization are interpreted best with dialogue as a central method.

Parts 3 and 4 of the book apply the conversation about Vatican II's influence to concrete instances of different local churches living out a council-colored new evangelization. Articles in this portion of the book ask about the contours of the surprisingly diverse contexts of the new evangelization, especially questioning how each context meets the need for interreligious and secular dialogue in a distinct way. There is evidence of this being done quite well. For example, Fernando Filoni and Richard Baawobr name particular ways African “young churches” and small Christian communities have enjoyed increased lay leadership, worked on bibles for their own contexts, put their own mark on the liturgy, pursued justice and peace, and engaged in dialogue with other religious groups, all with the result of having marked their members with a deeply missional ecclesial identity.

If we are to take the council's bearing upon the new evangelization seriously, we must foster individual and communal encounter with Christ in challenging contexts and then work to catch up in our theological reflection upon the joys and tensions this encounter effects. Attention seems to go to the movement's nature and terminology, its intersection with traditional elements of evangelization, its most poorly understood aspects, and its critics. Kim and Grogan see this abundant and wide-reaching commentary on the new evangelization as well as the fairly small amount of work done so far documenting its results as indicative of its relative historical youth as a renewal effort. The book's strength is in taking the long-term view. The church's renewal is in many ways just warming up and getting to know the unprecedented and rapidly changing landscape in which it must operate. While this book might fall slightly short of the comprehensive view of the new evangelization to which it aspires, it does accomplish its central work of organizing and sharing a landscape of the new evangelization as it intersects with the council and manifests joys and challenges in particular contexts.