Research on social capital during the past two decades has shown that willingness to trust is linked to a host of individual and social outcomes, such as health, education, democracy, and robust economies. In this thesis I examine the ways in which religion may affect attitudes of trust, employing both quantitative and qualitative research methods. Specifically, three aspects of religion have been examined: denominational affiliation, spiritual belief, and the nature of the social interactions of the members of a faith community. Contextual factors relating a particular tradition to the broader society have also been included in the analysis. My findings suggest that although there is scant evidence to the effect of theology on trust, a much stronger influence on trust comes from the nature of social interactions (in the form of community‐building) and contextual factors (i.e., having a history of discrimination or being a resident of Quebec). / ix, 154 leaves ; 29 cm

Churches are always already in crisis. In this study, I take the current crisis of churches as a point of departure in order to offer a critical and constructive account of church as open(ed) community. In conversation with Ernst Troeltsch (1865-1923) - a conversation which concentrates on a hermeneutical-constructive rather than a historical-critical retrieval of his interdisciplinary thinking - I argue that the communities which constitute church need to be elasticised in order to engage the 'finite other' (the creature) and the 'infinite other' (the creator). My study counters common characterisations of the current crisis of churches in which diversification is interpreted as the reason and de-diversification is interpreted as the response to crisis. In these characterisations, churches are closed off against the 'other'. In three parts which examine the controversial but connected concepts of 'religiosity', 'community', and 'identity', I suggest that the sociological closure against the finite other and the theological closure against the infinite other are connected. Taking trust as a central category, I argue that both the finite other and the infinite other are constitutive of church. Trust opens identity to alterity. Thus, I advocate a turn in the interpretation of the identity of Christianity - from identity as a 'propositional possession' to identity as a 'performative project'. The identity of Christianity is 'done' rather than 'described' in the practices of church. Church, then, is a 'work in movement', continually constituted through the encounter with the finite and the infinite other in Jesus Christ. My study contributes to ecclesial practices and to reflections on ecclesial practices in the current crisis of churches through the elasticisation of ecclesiology. It retrieves Troeltsch's interdisciplinary thinking for the controversies which revolve around the construction of community today, opening up innovative and instructive approaches to the investigation of the practices of Christianity past and present.