Abstract
Lee Beach’s phrase “hopeful demise” captures his conviction that the cultural dislocation of the church in the post-Christendom West may provide the church with a reorienting perspective on its true identity. In its loss of privileged social position and cultural authority, the church may rediscover its true purpose (233).
His academic work and decades of pastoral experience come together in sound biblical theology, insightful social analysis, and practical reflections on the North American church. Beach argues that to follow Jesus requires the recognition that the church is no longer at home in the culture. What to do? “In an exilic situation, the church must return to its founding narrative—the story of God’s people as recorded in Scripture—and there find the resources that it needs to recover its identity” (48).
Beach develops a theology of exile, moving through the Old Testament, Second Temple Judaism, the ministry of Jesus, and the life of the early church, culminating with the exilic wisdom of First Peter and practical reflections on holiness and mission. By including diaspora texts, Brueggemann observes in his foreword, Beach makes clear that God’s people are given a hope that does not depend upon returning to some former home or status (12).
A theology of exile can shape practices for a church on the margins, and Beach begins with leadership. “Exilic leadership will seek to help engender hope in the life of a congregation by cultivating an imagination within them that fuels a missional vision for its future existence” (153). This shift is not easy for those accustomed to being in a favored position and requires a kind of conversion to a post-Christendom understanding, embracing a new identity as missionary to the culture.
Such prophetic leadership calls the church to embody the biblical ideal of accommodation without compromise, to see the Spirit as active in the dominant culture and to live engaged, holy lives that reflect the believers’ relationship with Jesus in such a way that the church, through its common life, both critiques the establishment and offers an alternative—“engaged but non-conformed lives that are guided by love and exercise genuine, abundant grace” (195).
Beach makes a strong, clear argument for how the church’s experience of losing power and finding itself on the margins, informed by a theology of exile, may help the church to rediscover its true identity and eschatological hope.