This book contains 25 papers prepared for a conference held at the University of Surrey, Roehampton in May 1999. The contributions are divided into three sections: the first deals with theological and philosophical perspectives, the second with history and sociology, and the third with artistic and literary approaches to religion.

The authors are in the main academics teaching at Roehampton, although the books opens with a contribution from the well known Latin American theologian, Jose Miguez Bonino. This chapter deals with the current situation among the Protestant churches in South America and is full of interest, not least because Bonino challenges optimistic evaluations of Pentecostalism, suggesting that this phenomenon has been ‘exaggerated both in numbers and influence’.

This splendid opening paper promised good things to come but, sadly, this hope was not to be realised. This is not to deny the value of many of these chapters, but overall the book is flawed in that the subject material is simply too diffuse and often bears little obvious connection to the volume’s title. I was left wondering how the conference participants managed to sit through all 25 papers! Here and there one discovers valuable insights, including an assessment of the significance of black churches in Britain, a challenging study of the global debt burden, and useful surveys of millenarianism ancient and modern. However, much of this material, like the chapter on Joachim of Fiore for instance, offers no indication at all of how these studies are related to ‘faith in the millennium’. As a result, although specialists may find useful observations here on aspects of the history and sociology of Western religion, readers seeking for help in facing the challenges to faith in the third millennium are advised to seek it elsewhere.

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