On Aug. 28, 1955, 14-year-old Emmett Till was found dead in Money, Miss. He had been brutally beaten and lynched after accusations he had whistled at a white woman, Carolyn Bryant, in her family’s grocery store. Years later, Bryant admitted to fabricating the accusation entirely. The men who murdered Till were found not guilty, but…
Category: Theological Reflection
Strength in Neighbors
Do neighbors matter? When we think about our social lives and wellbeing, our minds typically go first to the people closest to us: family, close friends, romantic partners. But what I’ve come to realize is the importance of “weak ties,” a term coined by Stanford sociologist Mark Granovetter. Weak ties are casual acquaintances, people we…
Trauma, Abuse, and Redemption
I have recently been interested in the idea of theodicy, and as a survivor of childhood trauma and abuse[1] trying to find the meaning of suffering, if there even is one. I am currently working on a devotional book on reading Scripture through the lens of trauma. The study that I have done and the…