God’s Advocates , Rupert Shortt’s 2005 collection of interviews with prominent Christian thinkers, is one of the best introductions to contemporary theology available. Premised on the claims that theology is recovering its nerve and that this recovery is especially noticeable in the UK and America, the book includes interviews with Rowan Williams, Alvin Plantinga, John Milbank, Jean-Luc Marion, Stanley Hauerwas, Miroslav Volf, and Oliver and Joan Lockwood O’Donovan and covers the range of topics you’d expect from those theologians and philosophers.

Shortt, religion editor for the TLS is the ideal theological journalist. He is well-informed, and pushes his interviewees when they get sloppy. But he doesn’t call attention to himself, and lets the subjects talk, at great length, in their own voices.