This 1866 book was published in a time of great change in the Church of England. Trollope began as a High Church adherent and then worked his way to a Broad Church stance, a theological liberalism (toleration of belief and interpretation, regard for the individual conscience, a willingness to tolerate the ambiguity of finding truth in the extremes as well as the middle). This book deals with a crisis of faith and a crisis of structural form in the Victorian Church of England. It possesses all the interesting attributes of the novelist’s style. Note on the final chapter: John William Colenso (1814 – 1883) was a British mathematician, theologian, Biblical scholar and social activist, who was the first Church of England Bishop of Natal. His progressive views on biblical criticism and treatment of African natives were controversial. - Summary by David Wales