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"This book is about the changing fortunes of religion in postmodern times." With this beguilingly simple opening line, sociologist and religious scholar David Lyon (Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario) introduces us to his complex web of interrelated arguments about the social status and influence of religion at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The project has an obvious logic to it: If modernity was critical and dismissive of religion, what is to be its fate in the postmodern world? Lyon's discussion is set within the context of previous work, whose conclusions are reiterated here. His The Steeple's Shadow: On the Myths and Realities of Secularization (1987) challenged the "secularization thesis" of classic sociological theory and argued that categories of the religious realm remained strongly influential in persons' lives, even as the historical institutions of Christianity were relegated to the margins of public life and discourse. In