First Be Reconciled

Richard P. Church seeks to recover the church as a unique reconciled body in a world of enmity, particularly via civil litigation. He traces the church's historic reticence to litigate within the body and with non-believers through key biblical texts, a historical survey, with a particular focus on the Anabaptist witness, and a constructive theological defense of the necessity of eschewing certain forms of civil litigation contrary to the church's witness of reconciliation.