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London is the world’s most diverse city, with more than 30 percent of its residents hailing from outside England. This diversity is abundantly evident on market day in East London, as thousands of people crush into Petticoat Lane, and the trendier Up Market at the far end of Brick Lane, speaking dozens of languages. Women in short skirts brush shoulders with women in full-length burqas. Jamaican men discuss watches with a Cockney-speaking vendor. African CD sellers play a mix of gospel and Johnny Cash.

Rupert Shortt is religion editor of the Times Literary Sup plement in London (he also covers the fields of Latin America and Spain for the TLS) and author of two recent biographies: Benedict XVI: Commander of the Faith (2006) and Rowan’s Rule (2008), a profile of Rowan Williams, archbishop of Canterbury. Shortt has also collected a series of interviews with theologians, God’s Advocates: Christian Thinkers in Conversation (2005).

How would you describe the state of Christianity in the U.K.?