A journal titled The Religion and Society Report once editorialized that people are tempted to treat religion and society purely in terms of sociology or in terms of the politics of religion. The fact is that church bodies and ecclesiastical institutions are fair game for the sociologists who like to try to measure the churches as being either to the right or to the left. However, most sociologists are not in a favorable position to make judgments in that regard, because they do not understand that they are trying to chart a miracle. That was not the point of the editorial, however. The article noted that the Christian faith is occasion for the people of God to act as a community of faith, worship, and discipline which transcends the social and political categories of the world.

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