Crisis of Doubt is an impressively researched, clearly written, and forcefully, even polemically, argued work of scholarship. Moreover, Larsen is careful not to overplay his hand. Despite supplying an appendix of some thirty additional names of erstwhile secularists who found some sort of religion, he acknowledges that reconversion from secularism was not exactly rampant in Victorian Britain. He is also careful to show that his seven converts did not necessarily return to an impeccably conservative form of evangelical Protestantism. In fact most embraced fairly conservative positions on important Christian doctrines, but many held a more flexible view of biblical inspiration, and most remained radical in their social and political orientations. Reconversion did not mean capitulation to the religious or political status quo, and old radicals lived on in new Christian clothes.
By suggesting that the “crisis of doubt” within Victorian secularism was a more common and powerful reality than was the “crisis of faith” among the Victorian intelligentsia, Larsen is hoping not only to correct an exaggerated emphasis on the Victorian crisis of faith but also to show the intellectual robustness of Christianity in the 19th century. Challenging the notion that there was an inevitable and inexorable slide towards Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach,” Crisis of Doubt argues that the tide of faith could come in as well as go out. In that sense the book also acts as an important counterpoint to intellectually sloppy versions of secularization theory.