Christianity entered history as a new social order, or rather a new social dimension. From the very beginning Christianity was not primarily a ‘doctrine’ but exactly a ‘community’. There was not only a ‘Message’ to be proclaimed and delivered, and a ‘Good News’ to be declared. There was precisely a New Community, distinct and peculiar, in the process of growth and formation, to which members were called and recruited. Indeed, ‘fellowship’ was the basic category of Christian existence.

Georges Florovsky, ‘Empire and Desert: Antinomies of Christian History’. Taken from Jesus for President by Shane Claiborne and Chris Haws, p226