| Rubel Shelly | |
| Birth Name: | Thomas Rubel Shelly |
| Birth Date: | 27 November 1945 |
| Nationality: | United States |
| Employer: | Lipscomb University |
Rubel Shelly is an author, minister, and professor at Lipscomb University. He is the former president of Rochester College .
Shelly began as an instructor in the department of Religion and Philosophy at Freed-Hardeman University in 1975. In 1978, Shelly began preaching for the Ashwood Church of Christ, which later merged with the Green Hills Church of Christ to become the Woodmont Hills Church of Christ, which in turn later became known as the Family of God at Woodmont Hills, in Nashville, Tennessee, where he continued until 2005. From 1979 to 1980 while he worked to complete his graduate work at Vanderbilt University, he served as a graduate assistant in the Department of Philosophy. From 1981 to 1983, he was an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Lipscomb University.
When Shelly stepped down from the pulpit in 2005, he began teaching again as a Professor of Philosophy and Religion at Rochester University, in Rochester Hills, Michigan. He was named the President of Rochester College in May 2009. He also served as a co-minister for the Bristol Road Church of Christ in Flint, Michigan.[1] In late 2012, Shelly announced that he would be stepping from his role as President at Rochester College by September 2013.[2]
Shelley is known primarily as a preacher. He has been involved in debates and academic lectures on Christian apologetics, ethics, and medical ethics. He has also served with such groups as the AIDS Education Committee of the American Red Cross.
Shelly's theological stance on several important issues abruptly shifted around 1986 from traditional Church of Christ theology. He began to voice a radical plea for Ecumenism, as indicated by his book, I Just Want to Be a Christian. He had started out as a boy preacher in the Churches of Christ, writing several books containing what some have called "sound teaching", yet eventually Shelly became disenchanted with what he has called a "language of exclusion."[3] "Out of my own spiritual evolution, I've tried to adopt a much more Christ-like spirit and not be so sectarian and isolationist", Shelly said.[4]
Now, Shelly pursues a unifying vision "more nearly the ideal of the early American Restoration Movement concept and experience than what [he] was born into."[3] He critiques his former colleagues for trying to "decide who's in and who's out based on some list. We're very anticreedal in churches of Christ and Christian churches, meaning we won’t publish that list; we are more insidious in that we have unpublished lists of what lets you be "in" or "out" of our local churches. That's simply wrongheaded."[3] In The Second Incarnation, Shelly and Randy Harris claim that this move is anachronistic and leads to doctrinal error, because no church has ever achieved perfection, and in any case, one cannot and should not attempt to recreate the first century Church.[5]
Shelly has also co-edited and co-founded two important journals, Spiritual Sword in 1969 with Thomas B. Warren and Wineskins with Mike Cope.
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Articles