The phrase “base community,” used especially in the Roman Catholic Church and its theology, has become a programmatic term in theological and ecclesiastical controversies about congregational and church reform. It also denotes a church community defined empirically that, for all the individual differences—local, national, and spiritual—shares such features as self-organization, emphasis on koinonia, the active participation of all members in the congregational process, and the relating of the church program to the concrete, historical, everyday, sociopolitical needs o…