Leah D. Schade
Editor’s Note: This article includes excerpts from the author's book, Preaching and Social Issues: Tools and Tactics for Empowering Your Prophetic Voice (Bloomsbury/Rowman & Littlefield/Alban, 2025). Materials are used with permission.
I have taught preaching to seminary students and led countless workshops on preaching for clergy for nearly a decade. One of the questions I hear most frequently is: How can we address social issues in our sermons? Or can we address them at all?
Given the polarization in society – which carries over into churches – preachers wonder how they can proclaim the gospel in a way that invites and builds up a congregation rather than divides or diminishes it. Is it even possible to talk about topics of public concern in a sermon? While these questions are especially on the minds of early-career preachers, even some seasoned pastors can feel hesitant to broach contemporary issues for fear of blowback that can derail their ministry.
With this in mind, I want to be clear about what I mean when I talk about addressing social issues in sermons. I am talking about bringing a topic of public concern into conversation with the Bible and theology – not “political” preaching in the sense of pushing a partisan agenda. As Lisa Cressman states, “Our calling is to preach the gospel, and how the gospel sets the world – with its issues – to rights. The gospel doesn’t call us to take a ‘position.’ The gospel calls us to position ourselves to love Jesus first and most, and tend his sheep” (referencing John 21:16).[i] If there is an issue that is hurting people, causing inequity, injustice, or the suffering of people or God’s Creation, then the church – including preachers—are authorized to address it, just as the prophets and Jesus himself did in the Bible. “The sermon needs to ask the question why: Why are [the sheep] not being tended? Who and what is being loved more than these?” urges Cressman (John 21:15).[ii]
Of course, when we ask these questions, some people are going to become uneasy, uncomfortable, defensive, and maybe even angry. There is a lot at stake around issues such as racial justice, gender equality, women’s reproductive healthcare, and the environment, for example. Disputes around identity, safety, money, and freedom, for instance, shape the underlying values, dynamics, and influences that surround these issues. All of this can create a fraught situation for the preacher wanting to bring the gospel to bear on the contemporary issues of our time.
Nevertheless, as Lisa L. Thompson reminds us in her book, Preaching the Headlines, “Faith is not neutral. Preaching is a practice of faith. Neutrality in preaching is not attainable.”[iii] In other words, preachers are called to make faith claims about the issues that affect people’s lives and do so without fear of violating false ideas about being “neutral” when doing so. “Preaching goes awry and misses the mark either by not naming what is at stake in the claims being made or by not naming why people of faith should be concerned based on the values they claim,” she writes.[iv]
While Thompson cautions that preaching that engages the issues of the day should not be a mere “political stump speech,” she rightly notes that “unless a message candidly addresses life on the ground and moves to the collective concerns of life together, it succumbs to being an insular message hovering in the clouds. These messages never attend to faith as a dynamic and significant influence on the way we live and operate in the world.”[v]
To be clear, many preachers are already doing this work of “candidly addressing life on the ground” in their sermons. Those who preach amongst a people who are living through the realities of racism, sexism, poverty, xenophobia, or homophobia, for example, already have considerable experience speaking truth to power about the issues that affect the lives of their congregation. Even so, pastors who do regularly address certain topics may be hesitant to address others that their congregation might deem taboo. For example, a preacher may have no problem talking about the ways in which gun violence threatens their community; but talking about women’s access to reproductive healthcare is a topic they avoid because they know their congregation is divided. Similarly, we cannot assume that a pastor who regularly preaches about the need for equity for LGBTQIA+ persons will be similarly emboldened when it comes to addressing the needs of the increasing Spanish-speaking migrant population in their community, especially if their congregation is ambivalent about the changing demographics of their neighborhoods.
At the same time, there is no one way to address social issues in preaching. What “speaking up and speaking out” looks like for one preacher in their church might be very different for a preacher in another situation. Addressing social issues should not require anyone to be nailed to a cross, or sacrifice their health, sanity, or job – unless they so choose. Nor should preachers allow themselves to compromise their prophetic voice or capitulate to the forces that want to silence their public theology. Sometimes our ministerial vocation requires us to preach about “the thing that must not be named” to bring it to light and bring the gospel and community discernment to bear for the sake of our neighbors in need and the healing of our world.
As Thompson says, “Something different happens when the power of the unspoken is removed. When people are truthful and honest about how they really feel, we can stop pretending like nothing is wrong.”[vi] Once something is named or a taboo topic addressed aloud, the community can then open it up for exploration, examination, and interrogation.
The Rev. Dr. Leah D. Schade is the Associate Professor of Preaching and Worship at Lexington Theological Seminary in Kentucky. An ordained Lutheran minister (ELCA) for more than twenty years, she has pastored congregations in suburban, urban, and rural contexts. Dr. Schade has written six books including Creation-Crisis Preaching, Preaching in the Purple Zone, and Introduction to Preaching. Her most recent book is Preaching and Social Issues, published by Alban Books/Rowman & Littlefield. She is serving as President of the Academy of Homiletics in 2024 and is the director of two grant projects focusing on preaching and environmental issues.
[i] Lisa Cressman, The Gospel People Don't Want to Hear: Preaching Challenging Messages (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2020), 97.
[ii] Cressman, 97.
[iii] Lisa L. Thompson, Preaching the Headlines: Possibilities and Pitfalls (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2021), 11.
[iv] Thompson, Preaching the Headlines 12.
[v] Thompson, Preaching the Headlines, 12.
[vi] Thompson, Preaching the Headlines, 95.
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