Our task is no less than the reinvention of the church . Instead, the urgent task is to engage in genuine ecclesiology at the crossroad of theology and sociology. Sociologists agree on some basic features of contemporary Western societies, features that have a profound impact on the life of the church. The first of these features is the differentiation of social structures into distinct, albeit interdependent subsystems. The implications of differentiation for the life of the church are dramatic.
Differentiation leads to a society on the model of a sprawling shopping mall.
Specialty boutiques are scattered randomly, and religious shops throughout the mall compete for a dwindling market share. Closely connected to differentiation is a low level of ascriptive loyalty and the corresponding privatization of decision . Patterns of belief, patterns of association, and patterns of action are all matters of individual decision. Underlying privatization of decision is a generalization of values . Freedom and equality are assumed as universal values that shape society without recourse to particular patterns or prohibitions.