Writer.
Activist.
Pastor.
I grew up with my lovely grandmother’s unlovely advice, “Keep to your own kind.” When I was little, Granny drummed into me respect for my elders, but then chastised me for saying “Yes Ma’am” to a Black woman. She and my father tried to convince me that whites were better, and deserved better, than everyone else.
Even as a small girl, I knew they were wrong and promised myself that, one day, I’d fight back.
And I did. As a community organizer in Alabama, I led campaigns to defend voting rights, repeal anti-immigrant laws, stop utility cutoffs and plant closings, and pass landlord-tenant legislation.
I always liked starting trouble—good trouble, as John Lewis called it. Despite my flimsy religious upbringing, I became a pastor and started Beloved Community Church, a wildly diverse church where people rejected by society would be called Beloved. During my sixteen years as Beloved’s pastor, we hosted gospel shows in drag and LGBTQ+ poetry slams, marched with Black Lives Matter, gave safe space to undocumented immigrants, embraced people in the throes of psychosis and drinking binges, and helped people begin to heal from damage caused by racial and religious bigotry.
Even as a small girl, I knew they were wrong and promised myself that, one day, I’d fight back.
I was also a founder of Alabama Arise, Good Work Employment Project in Durham, N.C., and the Alabama Coalition for Immigrant Justice. Much of my justice work was done with Greater Birmingham Ministries.
Along the way, my father disowned me for my work, which he saw as a betrayal. He refused to speak to me for the last eleven years of his life.
I did my work in the name of love. And yet, over and over again, I caught myself hating the haters.
The animating question of my life and writing has been how to stand against hate without becoming a hater myself. After decades of writing grant proposals and crafting Sunday sermons, I’ve written a book I’m calling, Loving My Enemies: A Memoir Of Outlandish Pursuits, which I hope to see on bookstore shelves next year. I tangle with these questions: How do we relate to people we’ve been taught to hate and fear? And, when others cause us harm, how can we respond in ways that heed their humanity while protecting our own?
Through it all, I’ve taken immeasurable joy in raising my splendid sons, Frank and Luke. Now I laugh all the time with my brilliant grandchild, Kai.
