"This is a genuinely unique book. David Martin -probably the greatest British sociologist of religion in recent decades- maps out the basic tensions between Christianity's innate urge to construct an alternative reality, and its accommodations to that world . A treasury for intellect and imagination alike." Rowan Williams, Master, Magdalene College, Cambridge "David Martin, the sociologist who taught us that secularization is not a continuous and uni-directional process, but rather a many-stranded and shifting one, now has added a new dimension to this picture. By looking at the whole story through the lens of poetry: poetry not primarily as expression of belief, but through its affinity to invocation, worship, ritual, liturgy. This yields an extraordinarily rich and perspicuous account of the currents of English spirituality through many centuries." Charles Taylor, McGill University "In a single volume, David Martin brings together a lifetime's work on secularization, a thousand years of English poetry, and deep theological insight. A chronological sequence of reflections relates each of these strands to the others.

Readers will arrive by different routes, but all of them will be enriched by what they find. I recommend this book very warmly." Grace Davie, University of Exeter "Not since George MacDonald's England's Antiphon in 1868 has there been an attempt to survey the tradition of English religious poetry in this manner. But David Martin is at once a sociologist, a theologian, and (though he modestly denies it) a penetrating literary critic. The resulting cross-fertilization produces so many fresh insights that one's whole field of vision is permanently altered." Stephen Prickett, University of Glasgow, University of Kent.