When I think of the parish priests I know who are not remotely misogynistic, homophobic or paedophilic, feel faintly embarrassed by the short-sleeved missionaries of the past, minister tirelessly to their parishioners and struggle to maintain their crumbling churches, it pains me to think that in her twenties Lamorna Ash (born in the mid-1990s) viewed Christianity as

a single homogeneous bloc aligned with all kinds of malignant social positions … endemically misogynistic and homophobic, permanently stained by its status as a colonial handmaiden, a breeding ground for paedophiles. 

Christianity does have a terrible reputation among millennials, some of it deserved. However, as members of what Ash calls ‘my awkward generation’ have entered their thirties, some ‘have started discussing faith more seriously than we once did. We have seen more of the world’s strangeness and in return we are looking more deeply into that strangeness.’ She decides to investigate further, embarking on a journey round Britain to meet and interview Christians in their twenties and thirties. Her quest is also a kind of experiment: will Ash over the course of her travels herself feel a twinge of religious sensibility?

As someone who worries that there will be no one to replace the grey-haired churchgoers who form most Church of England congregations, I found her book fascinating. Ash quickly discovers that, far from being ‘a single homogeneous bloc’, Christianity in Britain manifests itself in hundreds of different forms. She endures