Introduction
by Joseph Mangina
Learn more about Dr Joseph Mangina, Professor of Systematic Theology
The Rev. Fleming Rutledge is well known at Wycliffe College, where she taught Preaching in 2008 and from which she received an honorary doctorate in 2019. The author of such works as The Undoing of Death and The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ, Rutledge has been a passionate advocate for more scriptural and grace-centred models of preaching. In recognition of her contributions, the College is in process of raising funds for a new professorship, to be known as the Fleming Rutledge Chair in Biblical Theology.
Rutledge, who grew up in the American South but now lives in New York, has often spoken of the influence of the Black Church and the 1960’s Civil Rights movement on her thinking. She has spoken movingly of how African-American Christians have lived out the tension between suffering and hope, between bearing the cross and the divine promise of deliverance. While far from perfect, the Black Church has grasped the need to confront the powers of this age with the apocalyptic gospel of Jesus Christ. Readers wishing to learn more about Rutledge’s thinking on these issues should consult The Crucifixion (see the index under “Civil Rights”) as well as her many collections of sermons.
To commemorate Black History Month, Rutledge has written an account of how she came to a deepened understanding of race in America. This “conversion” narrative is an important document of contemporary history, which we now share with the Wycliffe College community.
A Memoir of a Conversion
by Fleming Rutledge
February 13, 2026
I deeply loved my parents, and revere their memory. (My sister would say the same.) However, they were typical of their generation of Virginia gentry and did not begin to question segregation in any way until the last decade of my father’s life (he died in 1989). I took note of something remarkable about my father’s reaction to my ordination in the Episcopal Church in 1976. Among those whom I chose to be my presenters, there was a Black educator from the church where I was a seminarian. I don’t think my father even noticed; he was so caught up in the grandeur of the ceremony (I am pretty sure I was one of the very last people to be ordained with the 1928 Episcopal prayerbook). I am therefore confident in saying that something was already shifting in his position by that time. My mother lived two decades after him and was therefore able to make a more discernible turn away from the mostly unquestioned attitudes of Southern white people.
My point in dwelling on my parents is to honor them while still acknowledging that their views, and the views of virtually everyone in our social circle, concerning segregation and the place of what the gentry called “colored people” (the most offensive term was forbidden) are unacceptable today. It is hard for anyone born since the late 60s to understand how the great majority of white people in the South could have been so completely convinced of the rightness of Black people “keeping in their place” for all foreseeable time, thus preserving “the South as we know it” (a phrase I remember hearing on a regular basis, especially from my beloved maternal grandmother).
Therefore it should not come as any surprise when I say that on August 28, 1963, I did not know very much of anything about Martin Luther King Jr. except that many people in Virginia thought he was a “Communist.” I remember asking my father what was so terrible about being a communist, in view of what the early Christians believed about shared property. My father was a highly regarded lawyer, very careful about delineating his opinions. I remembered his response as being, for me at that time and perhaps even to this day, impressive and convincing—the idea being that since “communism” was alien to flawed human nature, it has to be enforced. But that did not sufficiently account, from my perspective at that time, for the stature that this Black man had gained. I was curious.
It was well known that there was going to be a “March on Washington.” In the upscale West End of Richmond, Virginia, where Dick and I and our toddler daughter were living, the predominant attitudes toward this impending event ranged from mild curiosity to scathing disdain.
I was a traditional housewife at that time. I was at home and our small daughter was napping. Our “cleaning woman,”[1] Patsy, was vacuuming. The little black and white TV was in a tiny “study” off the living room. I turned it on. I saw the huge crowds and the faces behind the podium. Various Black notables were giving speeches, but none of them made any particular impression. I remember being turned off by the extravagant manner of a young man named John Lewis.[2] It was all rather disappointing. Then the great gospel singer Mahalia Jackson got up. I called to Patsy, saying she might want to come see this.
It scarcely needs to be said that Mahalia Jackson reached down into the very soul of many people whose attention may have been wandering, as mine had been. (Actually the song that really got to me was “How we got over” with its explicit telling of “the man who died for me.” The song directly before the Dream speech, at King’s request, was “I been 'buked and I been scorned.”)
Then King began his prepared speech. As is generally agreed, it was not very compelling at that point. He was reading from a manuscript, with conviction to be sure, but lacking fire. The crowd was respectful but underwhelmed, becoming restless. The story of what happened at that point is generally believed to be true. Mahalia Jackson, sitting close to the rostrum, shouted out, “Martin, do the Dream!”—a reference to a trope King often used in his sermons. He abandoned the manuscript and swung into the age-old rolling rhythms of the Black pulpit. “I have a dream today…”
As I type this, sixty-three years later, I feel almost exactly the same way that I felt as I listened that afternoon on a little black-and-white tv in suburban white Richmond, Virginia. I felt then, and I feel now, something inside of me turning over. Behold, I am doing a new thing.[3]
[1] At that time, “cleaning woman” would have been racially tinged code for today’s more neutral “housekeeper.”
