Are We “Really” in Exile? John Goldingay says “No.”

Are We “Really” in Exile? John Goldingay says “No.” August 2, 2015

On the whole “exile” debate, note John Goldingay’s approach:

We are not in exile; we are simply people who have been outvoted, literally and/or metaphorically. Exile happens to people who are not citizens and not members of imperial powers. We can’t use the image of exile to let ourselves off the hook of responsibility for the violence our nations undertake. Further, it’s surely not the case that most Christians see themselves as increasingly on the edge, at odds with the empire, or in exile from their culture – you might even suggest that the problem lies in our not seeing ourselves thus. I don’t think that most Christians in (say) Uganda or the United States think in that way. Further, while Europe and countries such as Australia, New Zealand, and Canada are post-Christian, most of Africa and the rest of the colonial/postcolonial world are not, and neither is the United States (which is of course a postcolonial entity, with the appropriate love-hate relationship with its European forebearers). In the United States, I like to say we are living in the time of Josiah, not the exile.

John Goldingay, “Four Reflections on Isaiah and Imperial Context,” in Isaiah and Imperial Context, eds. Andrew Abernethy et al (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2013), 211.


Browse Our Archives