The merging of politics and religion today occurs mainly as various fundamentalisms, those of right-wing American Christians, Islamic radicals, or Israeli Zionists. Back in the 1960s, a different blend was on offer: an attempted fusion of Roman Catholic theology and Marxist political theory, in forms ranging from priests involved in Latin American liberation struggles to small groups of European writers and would-be activists.

These essays stem from that moment and consider such topics as the intersections of church and state, the politics of marriage, metaphysics and metaphor, humour and the tactics of the British periodical Slant , but above all they concern the perhaps always-absent centre of all theological inquiry and reflection.