George Berkeley and New World Community

From the days when Christians were identified by the exclamation, “See how they love one another!”, to the present when other sorts of exclamations may be heard, the phenomenon of Christian community has received considerable attention. “From the first century in Rome,” Robert Nisbet has observed, “down to the contemporary works of Maritain, Niebuhr, and Ellul, the search for Christian community has been a crucial element of Western history.” Durkheim, Nisbet adds, found the very origins of religion in “the sense of the sacred community.” Whether as historians of Western history or of church history, we cannot escape the question of community. And whether as citizen or believer, neither can we escape more existential questions suggested in our own land and our own time that relate to the broad theme, “Christianity and Community.”