Turning to the ethnographic study of congregations, the broad claim in this part of the discussion has been that a closer relationship with theology brings the opportunity for attending more closely to the distinctive character of the church. The underlying concern here is to preclude any tendency toward a sociological or historicist reduction of the church only to its human scale. More than this, however, the aim is to appreciate more completely what faithful people claim to be doing when they gather as church. If we are not simply imposing a “bad faith” assumption on this claim from the
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