ABSTRACT
The gospel, I have argued, plays a key part-indeed, according to Christians the key part - in the 'long revolution' through which God makes and keeps human beings human. But the gospel only exists institutionally-through Churches, sects and communities, through monasteries, seminaries, faculties of Theology. Institutions have to survive amongst the bulks of actual things; they are part of culture. As such they take on the colouring of the culture of which they are part, adopt the ruling ideas of the age, make historic compromises and lose their utopian energy.
