Rethinking the Beloved Community Ecclesiology, Hermeneutics, Social Theory

This book, drawing for its title upon Josiah Royce's well-known turn of phrase, presents twelve essays, written over forty years of the author's life, which together see ecclesiology as a form of hermeneutical social theory intelligible both to theologians and scholars in the human sciences. This perspective is presented as one in which members of Christian communions, and others of good will, can wrestle in common with contemporary issues of human life in a context open to transcendence. The book is arranged in five parts: Social Reality, Hermeneutics, Ecclesiogenesis, Civil Society, and Householding. An analytical introduction by the author links the essays situationally and conceptually. The principal interlocutors, in addition to Royce, are Paul Ricoeur, Alfred Schutz, Ernst Troeltsch, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, G.W.F. Hegel, Robert Bellah, John Rawls, and Jürgen Habermas.

Lewis S. Mudge is the Robert Leighton Stuart Professor of Theology, Emeritus, and former Dean of the Faculty at San Francisco Theological Seminary.