Sarah Ruble, Rochester church chase the Gospel truth via video series

May 2—ROCHESTER — When Sarah Ruble saw anti-Semitic footage of marchers during the rally in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017, she knew she needed to respond.

Seeing people chant "Jews will not replace us," during a protest held over the removal of a Confederate monument there, Ruble, an associate professor of religion at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota, decided to set the record straight — both historically and theologically. The more vocal of the rallygoers' were spreading a misguided message of Christian nationalism — a belief that non-Christians and non-whites should have a diminished role in, or be removed from, U.S. society.

She decided to use videos to explore the history of racism and religion. Although the internet is brimming with videos exploring those subjects — "There's a lot of stuff on YouTube," she said — she hoped to fight fire with fire.

And maybe battle some of the misinformation with a high degree of historical and theological accuracy.

"Most of it is questionable — not great," said Ruble, who earned a Ph.D. in U.S. Religious History from Duke University.

Now the Congregational Church UCC of Rochester is backing Ruble's second series of videos.

The six-part series explores Christianity, history and how interpretation of Scripture affects both.

In the series, called "How Did We Get ..." Ruble examines how certain doctrines or cultural understandings came to prevalence. Examples include "How Did We Get The Trinity?" and "How Did We Get a Church Separate from Judaism?"

Videographer Ryan Bliss, a UCC member, is shooting and editing the series.

The UCC congregation plans to screen the videos and discuss the topics, said UCC pastor Rev. Andrew Greenhaw.

The Olive Branch, a Lutheran congregation that meets at Pop's Art Theater on Mondays, will collaborate with UCC to premier the videos later this year.

On a Sunday afternoon April 30, 2023, Bliss set up his camera at his wife's Bliss Photography studio. The lights were off, but a studio fill light augmented diffused cloud-filtered daylight pouring through the window. Ruble, wearing a condenser microphone clipped to her blue sweater, read from her prepared script scrolling on a teleprompter.

Ruble spoke about how interpretations of the Gospel of Paul led to centuries of interpretation of Christian view of Jewish people. She then began to break down what history shows Paul did and did not say.

The 25-minute videos are intended to be a cross between a short history lesson and annotations a pastor might have to go along with a sermon.

"My goal is to give people the resources to have better conversations," she said.

As a professor at Gustavus Adolphus College, one of her roles is to promote public history education.

However, Ruble said it's her identity as a Christian that's her main motivation for creating the videos. She said she was saddened to see hateful messages being rooted in narrow or mistaken interpretations of Christianity based on specific cultural teachings.

"I feel like I have a stake in people understanding Christianity," she said.

In some ways, her response was a reckoning with history more than a rebuttal to the rally. Passages of the Bible have been used to justify slavery and uphold other inequitable power structures. Conversely, Scripture has been used by people who advocate challenging those with wealth and power.

For example, both sides of the U.S. Civil War used their interpretations of Christianity to justify their positions and actions. The Bible was used to justify Jim Crow laws of the South while the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. used Scripture to help push the era toward an end.

Ruble said her videos touch on Christianity in American history, but much of what she covers in her series are events and cultures outside of familiar U.S. history. Doing that puts commonly accepted perceptions in the U.S. into a new light, she said.

"It helps get us out of our own cultural moment," she said.

In the fourth century, mainstream Christianity was highly critical of wealth and people who had it. Today, a sect of Christians in the U.S. have embraced a belief that wealth is a sign of virtue and God's favor. It's a common conflict Ruble said she has found through history and across cultures.

"It has to do with who has the money and who has the wealth," she said. "People have used Christianity to challenge wealth and power, and people have used Christianity to uphold hierarchies of wealth and power."

The interest in the videos even before the series is complete has been high, Ruble said. The message of inclusion and response to Christian nationalism her first videos carried has been a welcome message for some groups, she said.

"The groups that have used it have been self selected," she said. "They're the ones who are ready and willing to wrestle with these topics."