Like yesterday’s interview of Jim Henderson, today we feature a Christian leader who shoulders responsibility for justice — especially the poor, the widow, and the immigrant alien. Discover the amazing journey of Carl Ruby, pastor and advocate for social justice and refugee rights, when you listen to Bibdig episode 5. Carl tells the story of his efforts to teach principles of truth-telling, fact-checking, and civil conversation within the Christian community.

Here are Owen's personal observations of the arc of Carl's spiritual journey:

Carl Ruby started as a farm boy in Michigan, born into a conservative Evangelical family. He attended Cedarville as an undergrad, and fit right into the WASPy culture during those years when it had morphed into a "regular Baptist" Ohio college. He enjoyed being involved in his student life leadership program, and when he graduated the college offered him a job. By the time I met him in the mid-80s, Carl was a bright young leader studying for his Ph.D. in Educational Administration. I had the pleasure as a slightly older outside consultant to interview Carl every two years for the Cedarville admissions video.

I began to observe something happening to his world-view during the next few years. Perhaps it grew out of his travels with students to help hurricane victims wherever they were needed. Perhaps it came from his efforts to bring contemporary, more culturally diverse Christian voices to student chapel and co-curricular programs. Or maybe it was that appreciation for human freedom which the Apostle Paul observed to be a companion of true disciples of Jesus at the beginning of the Christian enterprise.

I can speak from first-hand experience that when Carl accompanied over a hundred CU students each year for a Civil Rights tour across the South, that love of freedom and sadness over American slavery also reached deeper and deeper into Carl's soul.

Before I completed my 25-year stint as the Cedarville admissions video producer, Carl became the VP of Student Life. And then I "graduated" and moved to Seattle and then Sitka, and I lost track of Carl.

When I finally caught up with him again in February for this interview, we hadn't seen each other for almost a decade. But in that intervening time Carl had left Cedarville, and had spent three years working to bring immigration reform to the United States. I guess he failed at that... :-)

Now Carl is Senior Pastor at the Central Christian church in Springfield, Ohio. He is living proof of how a human being’s heart can change profoundly, no matter where we work or worship, and what our circumstances may be.

For me, another old white guy who doesn't fit the stereotypes that naturally flow from our upbringing, Carl and I are exceptions that prove spirituality can and often does get transformed by reality.

New York Times article on Carl's sudden departure from Cedarville: https://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/16/us/a-christian-college-struggles-to-define-itself.html

Carl's church website is ccspringfield.org