The Exiled Church explores how churches and faith communities are faring in a highly secular contemporary culture. In many places, traditional denominations are in steep decline, church buildings are up for sale, even fast-growing new churches appear to be in a ‘boom and bust’ trajectory, and religion has effectively retreated from public life. Yet it was in exile that Israel discovered a deeper and truer knowledge of God.
Drawing on theories of secularisation, the experiences of a wide variety of churches, new religious groups, and voices in the emerging field of secular and sacred community innovation, Martyn Percy charts the shifts in power from institutional religion to individualistic spirituality. He asks whether the age of institutional Christianity is effectively over, and is being replaced by networks of socio-spiritual-political values focused around issues of common concern.
Imaginatively and engagingly written, The Exiled Church is ultimately a hopeful and confident book that offers a lifeline for all churches on the margins. It does not advocate for turning the clock back, or some recovery but rather for a citizenship that is adaptive to spirituality and religion in a culture of increasing diversity and individualism.
