• H. Richard Niebuhr, The Purpose of the Church and Its Ministry (New York: Harper & Row, 1956)
• James M. Gustafson, Treasure in Earthen Vessels: The Church as a Human Community (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976)

Session 2

• Vatican Council: The Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents, Edited by Austinn Flannery, O.P., Revised Edition (Northport, NY: Costello Publishing Company, 1987). Readings: “The Dogmatic Constitution of the Church” (Lumen Gentium), pp. 350-426; “Pastoral Constitution of the Church of the Modern World” (Gaudium et Spes), pp. 903-1014.
• Leonard Boff, Ecclesiogenesis: The Base Communities Reinvent the Church (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1986).

Session 3

• Jürgen Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit: A Contribution to Messianic Ecclesiology (New York: Harper & Row, 1975)

Session 4

• Peter J. Paris, The Social Teaching of the Black Churches (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985).
• Letty M. Russell, Church in the Round: Feminist Interpretation of the Church (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1993).

Session 5

• Stanley Hauerwas, A Community of Character: Toward a Constructive Christian Social Ethic (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), pp. 72-86, “The Church and Liberal Democracy: The Moral Limits of a Secular Polity.”
• Stanley Hauerwas, Against the Nations: War and Survival in a Liberal Society (New York: Winston Press, 1985), pp. 122-131, “The Reality of the church: Even a Democratic State is Not the Kingdom.”
• Stanley Hauerwas, Christian Existence Today: Essays on Church, World, and Living In Between (Durham: The Labyrinth Press, 1988), pp. 89-97, “Peacemaking: The Virtue of the Church.”
• Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon, Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony (Nashville, Abingdon Press, 1989), chapters 1, 2, 4, and 7.
• Stanley Hauerwas, After Christendon? How the Church Is to Behave If Freedom, Justice, and a Christian Nation Are Bad Ideas (Nashville, Abingdon Press, 1991), pp. 93-111, “The Politics of the Church: How We Lay Bricks and Make Disciples.”
• Stanley Hauerwas, Dispatches From the Front: Theological Engagements With the Secular (Durham: Duke University Press, 1994), pp. 177-186, “The Church and the Mentally Handicapped: A continuing Challenge to the Imagination.”
• Lewis S. Mudge, The Church as Moral Community: Ecclesiology and Ethics in Ecumenical Perspective (New York: Continuum, 1998)
• Lewis S. Mudge, The Sense of a People: Toward a Church for the Human Future (Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1992), pp. 183-221, “Churches in the Human Conversation.”
• Lewis Mudge, TBA

Session 6

• Wade Clark Roof, Spiritual Marketplace: Baby Boomers and the Remaking of American Religion (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999).