This study confronts the current crisis of churches. In critical and creative conversation with
the German theologian Ernst Troeltsch (1865-1923) Ulrich Schmiedel argues that churches need
to be elasticized in order to engage the other. Examining contested concepts of religiosity
community and identity Schmiedel explores how the closure of church against the sociological
other corresponds to the closure of church against the theological other. Taking trust as a
central category he advocates for a turn in the interpretation of Christianity-from
propositional possession to performative project so that the identity of Christianity is done
rather than described. Through explorations of classical and contemporary scholarship in
philosophy sociology and theology Schmiedel retrieves Troeltsch's interdisciplinary thinking
for use in relation to the controversies that encircle the construction of community today. The
study opens up innovative and instructive approaches to the investigation of the practices of
Christianity past and present. Eventually church emerges as a work in movement continually
constituted through encounters with the sociological and the theological other.
