Exilic Preaching: Testimony for Christian Exiles in an Increasingly Hostile Culture

"I propose that pastors and parishioners together . . . take into account this changed social reality of the marginalization of faith, a marginalization perhaps felt most strongly by young people." — Walter BrueggemannThis powerful collection of articles and sermons focuses on the new location of the church in contemporary North American society, a location that may be described by the metaphor "exile." Four of America’s most prominent preachers/theologians—Walter Brueggemann, Stanley Hauerwas, Barbara Brown Taylor, and Will Willimon—here address the growing uneasiness of today’s Christians about sustaining old patterns of faith and life in a context where their most treasured symbols of faith are often mocked, trivialized, or dismissed.How do you preach to people who increasingly feel like "exiles" in a society whose dominant values they find difficult to accept? What do you say to people whose structured, reliable world that once provided meaning and coherence seems to have disappeared? What words, images, stories can you use? What kind of language will be understood in this setting? This book deals with all of these questions and more."In such a time, it is easy to lose our way. Therefore we preachers would do well to cling to our vocation, to determine to know nothing save that which the church has called us to preach, to serve the Word before we bow before other gods." — Will WillimonErskine Clarke is Professor of American Religious History and Publisher of the Journal for Preachers at Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, GA.