For two millennia the church has struggled with its image of itself and its image of the world outside. The church experienced a special pressure emerging from its belief that its Lord had given it a double-edged commandment—it was to engage with the world, to love the world, to serve the world, to convert the world. And yet it was also to maintain itself as in some sense “distinct from” the world. It was to be a “peculiar people,” as Peter put it, but the peculiarity had much to do with caring for