Maurice Cowling was born in London in 1926. He was educated at Battersea Grammar School and Jesus College, Cambridge, where he read History. He did military service between 1944 and 1948 in the British and Indian armies. He as a Fellow of Jesus College from 1950 to 1953 and, after a period spent chiefly in London, returned to Jesus as a Fellow in 1961. Since 1963 he has been a Fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge, and from 1976-93 University Reader in Modern English History.

Introduction; Part V. The Christian Intellect and Modern Thought in Modern England: 1. The reanimation of protestantism I: Carlyle, Froude and Kingsley; 2. Christianity and literature I: Burke and Disraeli; 3. The reanimation of protestantism II: Thomas Arnold, Bunsen, Jowett, Stanley, Lyall and Max Muller; 4. The enlargement of Christianity: Matthew Arnold, Seeley, Sidgwick and Wicksteed; 5. Christianity and literature II: Dickens, Tennyson, Browning, Pater and Wilde; 6. Christianity and modern knowledge I: Stirling, Wallace, Caird and Green; 7. Whiggism, liberalism and Christianity I: Macaulay, Lecky, Bryce and Fisher; 8. Whiggism, liberalism and Christianity II: Fitzjames Stephen, Acton, Maine, Inge, Henson and Smuts; 9. Christianity and modern knowledge II: Whewell, Stubbs and Cunningham; 10. Christianity in an unfriendly world I: Shaftesbury, Maurice, Westcott, Tawney and Temple; 11. Christianity in an unfriendly world II: Forsyth, Masterman, Gore, Figgis and Lewis; 12. Christianity in an unfriendly world III: Underhill, Eddington, Needham, Zaehner and Jung; 13. Christianity in an unfriendly world IV: Balfour, Ashley and Joseph Chamberlain; 14. Christianity in an unfriendly world V: Milbank and Macintyre; Part VI. The Post-Christian Consensus: 15. Modern knowledge and the post-Christian consensus I: Darwin, Dawkins, Galton and Pearson; 16. Modern knowledge and the post-Christian consensus II: Freud, J. B. S. Haldane, Huxley and Popper; 17. Modern knowledge and the post-Christian consensus III: F. H. Bradley, Bosanquet, R. B. Haldane, A. C. Bradley, Elgar, Parry and Hadow; 18. Modern knowledge and the post-Christian consensus IV: Maitland, Hobhouse, Keynes and Hayek; 19. English socialism as English religion: The Webbs, Macdonald, Laski, Orwell and Crossman; 20. Literature and the post-Christian consensus: Wordsworth, Hardy, Kipling and Forster; 21. Modern knowledge and the post-Christian consensus V: Richards and Leavis; 22. Modern knowledge and the post-Christian consensus VI: Williams, Eagleton, Kenny, Skinner and Scruton; 23. Judaism and the post-Christian consensus: Namier, Berlin, Koestler and Steiner; 24. Complication and dilapidation; Conclusion: the author and the argument; Index.