It s fashionable in the church to talk about Christians as a people in exile people who find themselves to be alienated strangers in a foreign land. The concept of a new exile has given Old Testament scholars authority and fresh voice in religious discussion. If Christians are in exile like the Jews were in exile, then there must be something we need to learn about exile in the Hebrew scriptures. Exile has given fearful Christians, Christians who seem afraid of the real world, a way of dealing with the fact that mainline Christianity seems to have lost its appeal to many.
Exile justifies our sense of disenfranchisement, our move from center stage to the sidelines.
It protects us from asking awkward questions about why we are not center stage, why our churches are not packed to the doors. We can adopt the stance of victims in the struggle for survival. But there is a basic problem with this metaphor, something wrong with this picture we have not been cast out from the country of our birth by our government or some invading force. We have not been expelled from our native homes, deprived of possessions and freedom. Feeling like a stranger does not make me a person in exile.