The Doctrine of the Spirituality of the Church in the Ecclesiology of Charles Hodge

During the Nineteenth Century, the church in the United States wrestled with how to respond to that era's major social, political, and ethical issues--slavery and the Civil War and its aftermath. Should the church's role be only to evangelize society, or should she also speak prophetically? Strange brillantly shows how Charles Hodge defended a view of the spirituality of the church that permitted it to maintain a witness to its culture while not being overwhelmed by the politics of the day. Hodge's nuanced understanding of the church's spirituality is as profoundedly fresh and relevant now as it was then.