The Church in Exile: Living in Hope After Christendom
Digital Logos Edition
Overview
The people of God throughout history have been a people of exile and diaspora. Whether under the Assyrians, Babylonians, Greeks or Romans, the people chosen by God have had to learn how to be a holy people in alien lands and under foreign rule. For much of its history, however, the Christian church lived with the sense of being at home in the world, with considerable influence and power. That age of Christendom is now over, and as Lee Beach demonstrates, this is something for which the church should be grateful. The “peace” of Christendom was a false one, and there is no comfortable normalcy to which we can or should return. Drawing on a close engagement with Old Testament and New Testament texts, The Church in Exile offers a biblical and practical theology for the church in a post-Christian age. Beach helps the people of God today to develop a hopeful and prophetic imagination, a theology responsive to its context, and an exilic identity marked by faithfulness to God’s mission in the world.
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- Offers a biblical and practical theology for the church.
- Helps to develop a hopeful and prophetic imagination.
- Challenges us to come to terms with the church's identity as exiles in post-Christendom.
With great care and serious scholarship, Lee Beach writes about the demise of Christendom and what Christians should do about it. Read this book and weep... or see the church with new hope like you’ve never seen it before. For me, I ended up with the latter and am extremely grateful for having read it.
--David Fitch, Northern Seminary, author of Prodigal Christianity
This is a realistic yet profoundly hope-filled account of contemporary, post-Christian, fragmented society and the nature and role of the church in its exilic state. Grounded in thorough biblical exposition, Beach normalizes this state, and in fact suggests that the church is most healthy and most true to its missional identity when it ‘digs the ground’ it is on! Lee Beach has made a significant contribution to the 'church in exile’ literature by fleshing out what it means for said church to live into its true identity. All church leaders should have this book in their arsenal!
--Ross Hastings, Regent College, author of Missional God, Missional Church: Hope for Re-Evangelizing the West
Instead of pining for a lost Christendom, Lee Beach offers the North American church a deeply biblical model for ecclesial identity and mission that is addressed to our contemporary situation of ‘exile.’ His nuanced exegesis of Old Testament diaspora tales, his exploration of the mission of Jesus in the context of Second Temple Judaism and his profound analysis of 1 Peter speak powerfully to the church in a post-Christian context. We have much to learn from Beach's insights about holy, missional and hopeful Christian living from the margins.
--J. Richard Middleton, Northeastern Seminary, Roberts Wesleyan College
- Title: The Church in Exile: Living in Hope After Christendom
- Author: Lee Beach
- Publisher: IVP Academic
- Print Publication Date: 2015
- Logos Release Date: 2018
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Reader Edition
- ISBNs: 9780830897025, 083089702X
- Resource ID: LLS:9780830897025
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2024-03-06T21:21:08Z