In a politically divided church, what’s the preacher to do?

Megan Rapinoe, in her now famous speech in New York after her team won the World Cup, issued this call to action: “This is my charge to everyone. We have to be better. We have to love more, hate less. We got to listen more, and talk less. . . . There’s been so much contention in these last years. I’ve been a victim of that. I’ve been a perpetrator of that . . . but it’s time to come together.” The following week, Donald Trump initiated a national feud with a series of racist tweets in which he told congresswomen they should go back to their home countries.

This is the nation we live in; this is the tenor of our discourse. Clearly, preachers do indeed need resources for “ministry in the red-blue divide.”

Enter Leah Schade. Her first book, Creation-Crisis Preaching: Ecology, Theo­logy, and the Pulpit, positioned her as one who is familiar with purple preaching. Preaching on climate change means wading directly into the purple zone.