This book is a decade by decade study of the history and theology of mission from 1900 to 1990, excluding the disastrous forties.

Formally, the book is an interweaving of three missiological strands:

1. Surveys of the most important mission conferences held this century: New York, 1900, Edinburgh 1910, Jerusalem 1928, Tambaram 1938, CWME Mexico 1963, Vatican II Lausanne 1974 and Nairobi 1975.
2. Portraits of some of the most important missions writers and statesmen (there is almost nothing about women in this book), especially (alphabetically) Karl Barth, Hendrik Kraemer, John R Mott, Stephen C. Neill, J.H. Oldham, William Paton and MAC Warren.
3. An unfolding of the changing understanding of an important missions issue, namely the relationship between Christianity and other religions, from the writings of J.N. Farquhar to those of John Hick and Lesslie Newbigin.

Yates begins with the Student Volunteer Movement, the Edinburgh Conference 1910, Commission 4, the writings of Farquhar and A.G. Hogg, the widespread fear of advancing Islam, the longing for unity, and mission as expansion, ‘a comprehensive plan for world occupation’ (p. 31).

His second chapter on mission as Volkskirche (1910–1920) may be of most interest, because not available elsewhere in English. This is a discussion of the German missionaries Bruno Gutmann in East Africa, and Christian Keysser in Papua New Guinea, their (later more controversial) ideas of Volk, Blut and Boden.

From the 1920 to 1940 period Yates discusses the Jerusalem conference in 1928, the Laymen’s Foreign Mission Inquiry 1932–1933 and its controversial outcome, the book Rethinking missions, and the debate about other religions leading up to Tambaran 1938, which was dominated by the great Dutch missionary Hendrik Kraemer.

After World War II Yates focuses, in the 50s, on his mentors M.A.C. Warren, S.C Neill and K. Cragg, on the somewhat sterile arguments about mission as presence versus mission as proclamation, and the events leading up to the incorporation of the International Missionary Council into the WCC at New Delhi in 1961.

For the 1960s Yates focuses mainly on Roman Catholic mission, especially Vatican II documents, liberation theology, base ecclesial communities and Evangelii Nuntiandi. This is balanced by emphasis in chapter 7 on evangelical missions, especially on the Lausanne 1974 conference and its sequels; faith missions, especially Wycliffe Bible Translators and the New Tribes Mission; and Donald McGavran, the father of the modern church growth movement.

The final chapter focuses on pluralism and its effect on the theology or religions from Hocking and Hogg to Hick, Newbigin and the re-evangelisation of western culture.

Yates has selected his topics carefully, conscious of how difficult it is to use a wide-angle lens without distorting effects. He writes meticulously and conscientiously; he muffles the stridency of some debates; his fire is heavily banked down: a glow or flame is visible only occasionally. Since he writes as a scholar, of statesmen and conferences, there is little sense of what it feels like to be an ordinary missionary in the year after year slog of presence, encounter, evangelism, church planting, suffering, separation, joy. There are some curious omissions: almost nothing about decolonisation; nothing about the upheaval caused by the Chinese revolution and missionary exodus; very little about Third World missions.

This is a very helpful reference work. It points up the need for a new Dictionary of World Mission.