ABSTRACT
Evangelicals are ambivalent about the church. I suspect that Daniel Hardy’s assertion above that the church is nothing less than the embodiment of faith in the form of a society makes many evangelical minds simultaneously uncomfortable and hopeful. We are uncomfortable because we have become accustomed to thinking about faith with direct reference to God rather than being that which is mediated through the church. To emphasize the church when we know from experience how unreliable it is compared to God is risky, if not wrong. On the other hand we find hope through Hardy’s words. They hold out the possibility that Christian faith operating in the world goes beyond just proclamation, and always being slightly removed from the relationship-hungry world, and results in a new form of life together, embedded in its surroundings.
