ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how Jurgen Moltmann understands the role of the church within society, in particular with regard to the question of 'civil religion'. Moltmann sees the identity of the church primarily as a missionary identity. By this, he means that it is a church that may never rest content with either its own position in the social structure, nor with the world in which it finds itself. In articulating the relationship of the exodus church to modern society, Moltmann hastens to distinguish his own understanding of political theology from civil religion. Moltmann finally grounds his understanding of the social responsibility of this 'church on the move' in a doctrine of vocation borne of Christian expectation. As Christian theology is inescapably a missionary theology, it is called to go out into the world in proclamation of the coming kingdom.
