After a few recent visits, I have been struck by a feature of academic life in England and the outlying places that get lumped in together as the ‘UK’. Not the savage neo-liberal cuts to education or the student protests, but an extraordinary topsy-turvy relation between theology and biblical studies. Given the long story of biblical criticism’s effort to extract itself from theology’s ecclesial and confessional control, one would expect biblical criticism to be seeking new engagements outside the small patch of the Bible, eager to make alliances, broaden the perspective etc., while theology would be more concerned with drawing the wagons in a circle and defending its ground. But after two rapid-fire conferences in Durham and Bristol, the obverse seems to be the case (mostly); biblical critics are increasingly confessional in a very conservative manner, peering not so much into their own navals but into those of their reactionary soul-mates, engaging in mutual wanking to a degree not seen for a long time. By contrast, the younger theologians I met are heavily into radical philosophy, Marxism, anarchism, hard-edged environmental politics, reading, engaging, critiquing and asking how theology fits into and responds to such a larger picture. To be sure, there are exceptions, such as the increasingly comic Maclagan, or Edinburgh’s pandering to swathes of evangelical Americans, but the vibe seems to be with the theologians, while more and more biblical critics lose the plot.