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Fleming Rutledge: Proclaiming God's mighty Word

Text by Joan Huyser-Honig
Photography by Steve Huyser-Honig

Especially since 9/11, do you believe God has a special task for American Christians? Fleming Rutledge does. But she thinks evangelical Christians won't understand that task unless they return to the Bible and talk with each other.

What's the same and different about loving God and loving your country?
What's the same and different about loving God and loving your country?

You know the territories staked out in American mass media. Red state, blue state. Godless liberals, God-fearing conservatives.

Maybe you speak disdainfully of those who call themselves Christians, yet "fail to defend the sanctity of traditional marriage." Or, perhaps your scorn is reserved for believers who support the war in Iraq.

Fleming Rutledge, one of the first women ordained as an Episcopal priest, describes this polarization as "a moment of great danger." Yet, she also sees the ferment as "a great opportunity for renewal."

"For the soul of American Christianity, we must keep working on what the term 'evangelical' means.

"There is no more pressing mission than for American Christianity to fashion a more inclusive understanding of Christianity-without relinquishing the Christian claim to the uniqueness of the power of the risen Christ. Jesus Christ is the hope of the world," Rutledge declared in a January Series lecture at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Rutledge spent 22 years in parish ministry before taking on an international vocation in preaching, speaking, and writing. In The Bible and The New York Times and her other sermon collections, she sets forth the intersections between biblical theology and real life.

She says that American Christians, especially evangelicals and charismatics, hold the key to 21st century geopolitics in this post-9/11 world. There's a condition, though, she says. American Christians hold this key if they follow the mighty God "whose outstretched arm delivers people from bondage into freedom."

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Like the late theologian Karl Barth and John G. Stackhouse Jr, a professor of religion and culture at Regent University, Rutledge knows that prayer and worship are never apolitical. Our words and ways in worship reflect our understanding of how God works in the world.

Barth famously advised pastors to write sermons with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other hand. In a recent interview on realism in worship, Stackhouse said that preachers tend to be "long on theology and the direct application of this or that ethical text, or long on current events and the direct application of the preacher's own ethics."

Instead, Stackhouse suggests, preachers should see themselves as neither master theologians or political experts but mediators who "stand between the Bible and current events," helping worshipers see how the Bible applies to the congregation's particular situation.

Fleming Rutledge urges evangelical Christians to focus on what they have in common.
Fleming Rutledge urges evangelical Christians to focus on what they have in common.

Similarly, Fleming Rutledge urges Christians to look for where God is at work in the world. She says there's never been a more important time to read newspapers, magazines, journals, and more for analytical accounts of cultural phenomena. Sound bites on the evening news or AOL aren't enough.

In her January Series lecture, Rutledge challenged an audience of more than 1,000 to remember that the gospel is good news for the whole world.

But when evangelical Christians label and dismiss each other according to their views on stem cell research, gun control, the environment, corporate responsibility, racism, or human rights-then the rest of the nation, and the world, dismiss Christians.

American Christians who focus on what divides them end up neglecting other issues they share with Christians outside their borders.

If instead, American evangelicals focused on what they have in common, they'd be better equipped to ponder these vital questions:

"Doing real Christian theology puts us in the forefront of all the struggles of our time, because that is where our God (theos) is at work. He is up to something. Our task is to discern, through study of the scriptures and in the context of the worshipping community, what God is doing in the world so that we can move where he is moving," Rutledge writes in her chapter of Loving God with Our Minds: The Pastor as Theologian.

Remember God's mighty power

The gospel is good news for the whole world, including people in the Arab world…
The gospel is good news for the whole world, including people in the Arab world.

In Matthew 22:29 and Mark 12:24, Jesus chides religious leaders for not knowing the Scriptures or the power of God. Understanding the full story behind today's news depends on immersing yourself in the Bible, God's story.

Rutledge says that too many American Protestant churches have lost knowledge of and confidence in God's Word. This mutes their public voice and makes them unable to "speak truth to power."

In Loving God with Our Minds, she exegetes Isaiah 55:11 and Romans 10:14-17 to show that the power in preaching does not result from the preacher or from the listeners' receptivity. Rather, God's message-akoē, kerygma, euangelion, evangel, the revelatory and performative word-is a victorious power that penetrates the unwilling and makes things happen.

African-American churches live out this understanding when members talk about who will "bring the message" rather than who will preach on a given Sunday.

Aligning with God's message makes churches strong, and churches "need to be strong in order to mount the critique of the body politic that the biblical faith requires," Rutledge explains.

…the southern hemisphere…and beyond.
.the southern hemisphere.and beyond.

To churches that offer genuine service to their communities-yet would rather talk about "spirituality" than the living God-Rutledge warns that their witness is secularized and "does not praise God." She recommends a "revivifying dose of Scripture and the power of God."

To churches that have so acculturated that they identify faith in Jesus as pro-war and only pro-American, Rutledge pleads that they return to what they say they believe in-that Christ's resurrection is good news for the whole world.

She faults Christians on the left and the right for not fully understanding how the gospel describes our status before God and each other. Both sides tend to narrow the doctrine of justification by grace through faith to justification by right doctrine. The result? Some church members feel marginalized for not embracing politically correct dogmas, while others get tossed out for voting Democrat.

See yourself as the sovereign God does

Whether speaking or writing, Rutledge often returns to Romans 11:32-36 (NRSV):

For God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all.

O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! "For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?" "Or who has given a gift to him, to receive a gift in return?" For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever. Amen.

Within or beyond your church sanctuary, do you divide people into Us and Them?
Within or beyond your church sanctuary, do you divide people into Us and Them?

Living the truth of this passage, Rutledge says, means seeing that we are all sinners in need of grace. This passage does not support a philosophy that identifies Us and the U.S. with God and ultimate Good. It does not give humans the right to decide who deserves grace.

Some Christians may mistake Psalm 139:19-22 ("do I not hate those who hate you") as permission to divide the world into good and evil and act accordingly. But Rutledge interprets the psalm's final verses ("search me, O God") as David's realization that his thoughts about enemies mean "he himself must be purged of wickedness by the only one who is able to purge us."

Rutledge believes that if evangelical Christians agreed on the sovereignty of divine grace in salvation as "the irreducible core" of evangelism, then they would no longer play the moral superiority card. They would not denounce each other as un-Christian or decide that one country has divine permission to say that some people do not deserve to be treated according to the rules of the Geneva Convention.

Claiming moral superiority to justify harming other people, such as Iraqi prisoners, does not fit with evangelical theology. "The mark of Christians is not righteous indignation of evil. The distinguishing mark is the way we behave when other people are in our power," she says.

Truly evangelical theology, she says, looks at how God can use the most unlikely agents for his purposes, even secret police with "corrupt money in their pockets and blood on their hands," who worked behind the scenes to bring down a falsely-elected president in the Ukraine's 2004 Orange Revolution.

Can I get a witness?

Preaching expert Cleo LaRue says the Holy Spirit will help us appreciate each other's insights, traditions, and aesthetics.
Preaching expert Cleo LaRue says the Holy Spirit will help us appreciate each other's insights, traditions, and aesthetics.

Even though many evangelical Christians have accepted the polarizing categories staked out in mass media, Fleming Rutledge sees several reasons for hope.

She points to the Episcopal Church, where people who disagree with each other's politics nevertheless join at the communion table each Sunday. "It's a great wonder, a sign of God's presence," she says.

Rutledge credits many African-American churches for persevering with forgiveness and tolerance, keeping faith that God can redeem anyone. Romans 4:17 promises that the God who raises the dead can call into existence things that do not exist. The African-American folk paraphrase of this verse, popularized by Rev. Andrew Young and his colleagues, puts it this way: "God can make a way out of no way."

As Rutledge said in her Calvin lecture, when evangelical Christians define themselves by Scripture and theology, rather than politics, they can "build on biblical bedrock." Together they can seek the common good and offer themselves "for the sake of the whole world for which Christ died."

LEARN MORE

Don't miss the bonus story on how to tell who is an evangelical Christian.

Get tips on designing services that include peace and justice and help worshipers meet Jesus in the eyes of "the least of these."

Listen to Fleming Rutledge's lecture on polarization among American evangelical Christians. Read an interview with her. Browse her website to buy her books or book her as a speaker.

Consider starting a book club to which you invite evangelical Christians who don't focus on the same issues as each other. Read books that help you understand the faith, theology, and perspectives of Christians you wouldn't normally think of as "in our camp." Question that phrase. And look for what you can admire in each author.

Calvin Presbyterian Church in Louisville, Kentucky, is home to people who worship in three languages.
Calvin Presbyterian Church in Louisville, Kentucky, is home to people who worship in three languages.

Check this list if you like reading sermons. For help on reclaiming the power of God in preaching, consult this video about preaching to post-moderns (scroll down). Read about African-American preaching, check out text helps for preaching through the lectionary, and examine other online resources about preaching.

Dana L. Robert, professor of world missions at Boston University School of Theology, explains how the center of world Christianity has shifted southward. Christudoss Theodore, formerly director of communications for the Church of South India Synod and now director of Jersey City Ministries in Jersey City, New Jersey, pleads for unity among American Christians. Warren Larson, a former missionary to Asia, talks about Muslim-Christian relations.

In what ways does your church make different kinds of people feel welcome?
In what ways does your church make different kinds of people feel welcome?

Before the 2004 World Alliance of Reformed Churches gathering in Ghana, women preachers from around the world were invited to submit sermons on the theme "that all may have life in fullness." Other pastors from several countries contributed Bible studies on topics such as choosing life, exclusion and inclusion, and church renewal.

Reflecting on Americans who abused prisoners in Iraq, Richard Mouw says he knows from experience that we are all sinners who need God's grace. Other Christians recommended focusing on our enemies rather than on why U.S. soldiers abused prisoners. Richard Hays asks fellow Methodists what happens to the world when Christians fight about homosexuality but remain silent about the question-the war in Iraq -that troubles Christians in other countries.

Homosexuality is a major flash point among evangelical Christians. Look at the theological differences among Christians, and then read about two Presbyterians who make the hard choice to stay in dialogue.

START A DISCUSSION

Feel free to print and distribute these stories at your church council, education, or worship committee meeting. Before getting into these questions, you might want to take a deep breath, sing "They'll Know We Are Christians by Our Love," and pray John 17:20-23 together:

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This article was first published by the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship,
http://www.calvin.edu/worship/.

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