This isolation must be endured and borne, and it cannot always be easily borne with dignity and cheerfulness. Such isolation is hard to bear because fundamentally it seems not to correspond to the essence of theology. Indeed, to assume a theological post in some remote place from which the public is all but excluded seems strikingly to contradict the character of theology. Religion may be a private affair, but the work and word of God are the reconciliation of the world with God, as it was performed in Jesus Christ. The object of theology, therefore, is the most radical change of the situation of all humanity; it is the revelation of this change which affects all men. In itself, revelation is undoubtedly the affair of the general public in the most comprehensive sense. What it has spoken into human ears demands proclamation from the housetops.

— Evangelical theology by Karl Barth (Page 111)