This book derives the principles of Friedrich Schleiermacher's theory of Christianity from his lectures on Christian ethics. It reveals that, alongside the confessional churches, it is also the social forms of marriage, family, and friendship, bourgeois society, the state, and the cosmopolitan connection between all humans that, each in itself and collectively, constitute the cultural effectiveness of Christianity.

Arnulf von Scheliha, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Germany.