Radix, Matrix: community belonging and the ecclesial form of universalistic communitarism

If inclusion is the constitutive social function of community belonging, the foundational values of historical communities must be scrutinized in the light of their coherence with this social function. Inclusion thus becomes a normative criterion for the legitimation of particular community belonging, showing that they are socially functional and coherent with themselves only if they respect an internal dynamics of inclusive and emancipatory universalization, opposed to exclusive and regressive particularism, often and illegitimately associated with community belonging. This insight is reinforced by the critical-comparative appeal to the historical-theological notion of ecclesiality established within Christianity, which provides stimulating prospects for an ethically and legally normative definition of citizenship. Different perspectives (exegetico-theological, philosophico-theoretical and historico-critical) come across in this debate to verify this interdependence and the consistency of the corresponding normative formulation of the principle of inclusion.