Rev. Reddit Andrews III believes all good theology should be practical. "Lots of theology is abstract, but good theology doesn't stop at that," he says.

A Yankee by birth (he was born and reared in Hartford, Conn.), Andrews joined the Reformed Theological Seminary in west Jackson in May as an assistant professor of practical theology, focusing on how theology affects local churches.

Now 51, Andrews says he experienced an epiphany when he was 25.

"I was lost, as lost as can be," he says.

Andrews comes from a long line of Baptist deacons, but his parents divorced when he was 11 and his mother raised him "outside the church." Still, he was interested in spiritual things, even as a child. His reawakening occurred at the end of a 15-year search.

"Near the end of that period, the Lord really started drawing me," he says. "I was resisting. I remember walking down the street one day and almost talking to the sky, saying, 'I'm not interested!'"

He chuckles, remembering the day. Things came to a head on New Year's Eve in 1987. Within two weeks, his mother and his wife, Nadine, returned to the church as well.

Andrews earned an undergraduate degree in biblical studies at Trinity International University in Miami and a master's of divinity from TIU's Illinois campus. From there, he served as a pastor in Florida, Georgia and, most recently, Sacramento, Calif.

"Christianity really is a religion that calls forth the best, intellectually, when it's understood properly," he says. "It explains life from the top down and places us where we should be: under God and on equal footing with all other human beings."

Recently, the church has been guilty of having a "selective prophetic voice" about political issues, Andrews says. Both conservatives and liberals take portions of God's message and treat it as the whole thing, dividing and co-opting the church for political ends. He believes the truth falls in the middle: Those on the left fall short when they don't condemn what falls outside the will of God, he says, but those on the right could do with more compassion.

Andrews says he and his wife are in Mississippi for the long haul. The couple has two daughters: Felice, 21, and Shannon, 12.

The key to the church making a difference in the systemic issues that have plagued Mississippi for decades--racism and poverty--is to remind Christians that they have a new identity in Christ, and there, race becomes unimportant.

"We're incredibly sinful," he says. "Once we get off track, the tendency is to take the Bible and to interpret it to justify where we are. Freedom comes when we can no longer use the Bible to support something that 
is evil."