C-3 The Liminal Church: Exilic Consciousness and Adventist Theopolitics

Buller Room 150

In postcolonial and cultural studies the category of “exilic consciousness” is often depicted as a form of subversive imagination “set against Western intellectual hegemony and its protocol of objective knowledge” (R. Young). This article builds on such delineations of the exile metaphor by both appropriating it and nudging it into a different direction in an effort to restate important parameters of Adventist theopolitics—theopolitics here standing for the idea of the church as a “structured social body” shaped by God’s apocalyptic inbreak. Following a brief exploration of 1 Peter and the theology of John Howard Yoder I argue for a remnant theology that seeks to eschew the apotheosizing of heterogeneity on the one hand and the privileging of doctrinal conformity over peaceable praxis on the other. I consider this to be of some importance as current debates in Adventism concerning creation, homosexuality, church-state relations, and so on reveal, implicitly and explicitly, different assumptions at work concerning authority structures, “regimes of truth” (M. Foucault), boundary crafting, and power, in turn shaping and informing Adventist theology and praxis.