Mike Crimshaw has come at the business of constructing a cross-cultural theology from a very different angle. His provocative text is written out of an experience of self-confessed marginality. That is not especially unusual. It is not uncommon for those who construct a cross-cultural or diasporic theology to feel as if they are on the edge of the received mainline discourse and inhabit a position of liminality. Where Crimshaw differs is his interest in a cross-cultural dialectic that is western and secular.

Some of Crimshaw's language is familiar enough to the stock run of theologians: there is plenty of talk about Cod and Christology. There is reference to Karl Barth, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, to neo-orthodoxy and death of Cod theologians. But then there is a line of difference. For those of us who are familiar with various movements of theological modernism, Crimshaw's use of the term may well seem idiosyncratic and perhaps jar – until it is recognized that his use of modernism comes not from theology but from architecture. Here is a sign of an alternative method and concern. Crimshaw draws upon secular texts to explore what a secular theology might look like in a world variously described as pre-modern, modern, postmodern and modern again after postmodernity. For the sake of his cross-cultural theology there is no sideways glance to current scholars working in this territory – and part of the reason for this preference lies in his interesting strategy of making use of literature to do with art and travel.