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Reckoning with holiness

The Bible and the New York Times, by Fleming Rutledge

When sermons are lifted from the pulpit—where things like eye-contact, delivery and relevance to the local context are critical—and put into a book, they can easily lose their impact. Fleming Rutledge's sermons do not. They carry into print the fervor and reverence that inform her spoken words. Read thoughtfully, they possess what Eugene Peterson calls a "subversive" quality: they get into one's heart and mind and change one from within.