[Ecclesiologists have long acknowledged a possible role for the social sciences in their discipline. The author examines the difficulties theologians face in utilizing the social sciences, given the diversity of approaches in that area, and the more profound issue that the social sciences can never be theologically neutral. It concludes that the only way of soundly utilizing the social sciences is to reorient theologically the social sciences and to include them “from the ground up” within a comprehensive theology of history. This is then the natural home for a historically conscious ecclesiology.]