Finding Courage to Preach in "The Purple Zone" (A Guest Post)

Lisa Cressman, Backstory Preaching’s Founding Steward, is away this week at the Episcopal Church’s General Convention in Louisville, KY.

Stop by to see her at the BsP table in the exhibit hall!

In addition, this summer she is busy creating a new video course about preaching honest, authentic, and empathetic sermons when listeners are experiencing heightened emotions—whether due to national polarization, community events, or congregational crises.

This course will be especially helpful when preparing sermons through the US national election this fall, though you’ll find it relevant when preaching through any challenges that need Good News— from collective concerns like climate change, systemic racism, and the treatment of immigrants to more local or personal challenges like difficult church decisions or transitions.

While Lisa’s away, we’re re-publishing blog posts that are particularly relevant to this moment.

Today’s guest post was originally published in 2018 but remains every bit as relevant today. I encourage you not only to read this post, but also to digest and apply Dr. Schade’s marvelous book, Preaching in the Purple Zone.

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Finding Courage to Preach in the PUrple Zone

By the Rev. Dr. Leah D. Schade

Professor of Preaching and Worship, Lexington Theological Seminary

As a professor of preaching and worship, I’ve consistently encouraged pastors to put their best prophetic foot forward when it comes to addressing controversial justice issues in the pulpit. 

But here’s the truth many clergy have shared with me: they are afraid to preach about issues of public concern. 

They know their sermons should in some way address things like racism, homophobia, climate change, sexism, economic issues, or hatred of foreigners, for example.  But fear holds them back, keeps them quiet, and muzzles their prophetic voice. 

How can you preach when you are afraid?

Why are clergy scared to preach about issues of public concern?

That’s one of the questions I asked in a survey I conducted of over 1200 clergy—one of the largest surveys on preaching and sermon content ever conducted in the United States. 

As part of my research into how preachers are approaching their sermons during this divisive time in our nation’s history, I designed and sent out a 60-question online survey directed to mainline Protestant clergy serving congregations in the United States. 

The survey “Preaching about Controversial Issues” ran from January—February 2017 and explored a range of topics, including why preachers avoid controversial topics in their sermons.

Pastors listed many reasons holding them back from preaching about justice issues, some of which are based on biblical, theological, or personal principles.  

But for more than half of the pastors surveyed, the reasons for not addressing issues of public concern boiled down to four main fears:

• Fear about hurting or dividing their congregation

• Fear about risking their ability to effectively minister in their church

• Fear about receiving negative push-back for being “too political”

• Fear about loss – loss of members, money, and their own jobs

“I feel like a coward.”

Take, for example, events in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 when the Ku Klux Klan, Nazis, and white nationalists descended on the city, injuring counterprotesters and killing Heather Heyer. 

I urged clergy to take a public stand on the issues of white privilege, racial hatred, anti-Semitism displayed in Charlottesville.   

But a pastoral colleague shared with me the realities of his church context:

“I sit in the middle of a town that time forgot. I’m a ‘blue dot’ in a ‘red’ church. My job depends on my ability to preach and teach the congregation in a way they can accept, and any controversial topics could negatively affect my position. I need my job. But I feel like a coward because I’m not able to be as prophetic as I want. The previous attempts by another minister were met with so much backlash that I’m scared to even ‘go there’ with them.”

This pastor is not alone in his fear about preaching about controversial justice issues. He’s also not alone in searching for ways to effectively minister in the midst of the red-blue divide within his congregation.  

The challenge is fraught with risks, but also offers opportunities for proclaiming the gospel and building community in profound and contextual ways.  

In my book Preaching in the Purple Zone: Ministry in the Red-Blue Divide (Rowman & Littlfield, 2019), I offer a new way to approach preaching in this politically divisive climate using a “dialogical lens” for interpreting scripture, and a nonpartisan method for crafting sermons addressing issues of public concern.