This bold work culminates Hall's three- volume contextual theology, the first to take the measure of Christian belief and doctrine explicitly in light of North American cultural and historical experience.

Hall is deeply critical of North American culture but also of sidelined Christian churches that struggle to gain dominance within it. "We must stop thinking of the reduction of Christendom as a tragedy!" he says. The disestablishment that the churches reluctantly enjoy can enable them to develop genuine community, uncompromised theology, and honest engagement with the larger culture. To a failed culture and a struggling church Hall shows the radical implications of a theology of the cross for the shape and practice of church, preaching, ministry, ethics, and eschatology.

Hall's frank and prophetic volume is the trilogy's most practical, and the most sustained probe to date of Christian life in a post-Christian context.