Fortress Press

“The brilliant study sheds new light also in Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s ecclesiology deeply committed to sociality. Michaela Kušnieriková uses the biblical metaphor of family and analyzes the Lutheran theologian in connection with the political thinker Hannah Arendt and the Orthodox Theologian Dumitru Stăniloae—a powerful dialogue between Bonhoeffer’s ecclesiology, a political theology and a theology of the world and communion.”

“Michaela Kušnieriková makes a powerful contribution to the debate on how Christian practice can survive in the public forum when the institutional stability of churches is shaken. Engaging in conversation with three different authors who lived in totalitarian regimes—Hannah Arendt, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Dumitru Stăniloae—Kušnieriková traces how spirituality and justice can co-exist in times of crisis. The type of public theology she proposes is well grounded and argued for sensitively. Her account of the struggles not only for personal but also for ecclesial authenticity are drawn against the background of the changing face of culture and society in Europe and America, against the backdrop of a new rise in populism and totalitarian extremism. Her book offers an honest reflection on the alternatives to letting the world be either the realm of the enemy or an idealised cosmos where order and meaning are easily available.”

“At a time that demands urgent reconsideration of Christian agency in the social and political spheres, Kušnieriková gathers together three extraordinary thinkers whose experience of totalitarianism prompted them to examine the possibilities of shared action from the heart of the church. Juxtaposing each figure’s strengths and weaknesses, Kušnieriková strives to overcome both collectivist/individualist and public/private dichotomies to paint an illuminating holistic portrait of communal human activity in the realm of freedom bestowed by the perichoretic Trinity.”