Healing Racism with a Community of Allies with Catherine Meeks, Ph.D.

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Here we explore how racial healing becomes a lived spiritual practice instead of an abstract ideal. It is grounded in courageous truth-telling and compassionate listening across the deep lines of race, history, and identity. Theologian and contemplative teacher Dr. Catherine Meeks draws from her childhood as a Black sharecropper’s daughter in the Jim Crow South and from decades of civil rights and coalition-building work. She weaves autobiography with incisive analysis of systemic racism, scarcity, and structural injustice, inviting listeners into inner reflection alongside collective transformation. Emphasizing that “leaning across the bridge of our differences” is an ongoing discipline rather than a slogan, Meeks highlights the intersections of race, gender, class, and spirituality, and the crucial role of white allies and faith communities. She challenges the tendency to compete over which group is most oppressed—what she calls the “oppression Olympics”—and instead points toward a more unified, liberatory vision of justice. Throughout, Meeks models a fierce, faith-rooted commitment to those on the margins and offers a compassionate yet unsentimental path for confronting our deepest divides. (hosted by Justine Willis Toms)

Bio

Catherine Meeks, Ph.D. is a theologian, educator, and activist whose work weaves together racial healing, spirituality, and socio-cultural analysis. She is the founding Executive Director of the Absalom Jones Episcopal Center for Racial Healing in Atlanta, where she helped create “brave space” for honest conversations, formation, and training around racism, reconciliation, and healing across the Episcopal Church and beyond. She is the founder of Turquoise and Lavender, an institute for transformation and healing and was awarded the President Joseph R. Biden Lifetime Achievement Award for her decades of work for racial justice.

Catherine Meeks many books include: 

• Living Into God’s Dream: Dismantling Racism in America (Morehouse Publishing 2016)
• Passionate for Justice: Ida B. Wells as Prophet for Our Times, (Nibs Stroupe) (Church Publishing 2019)
• A Quilted Life: Reflections of a Sharecropper’s Daughter (Eerdmans 2024)
• The Night Is Long But Light Comes in the Morning: Meditations for Racial Healing (Morehouse Publishing 2025)
• Bridging the Rivers of Difference: A Proclamation of Unity in Resistance (Morehouse Publishing 2026)

To learn more about the work of Catherine Meeks go to: https://www.turquoiseandlavender.com/

Topics explored in this dialogue include: 

• How racial healing is spiritual practice
• How systemic racism and structural scarcity perpetuate social injustice
• Growing up Black under Jim Crow and sharecropping
• How race, gender, class, and faith intersect
• How inner contemplation can lead to collective transformation
• How coalitions of allies can lead to a true liberation of marginalized peoples
• Why white allies need to understand how racism hurts them
• What is the role of faith communities and the struggle for civil rights
• Why we must move beyond “oppression Olympics” toward unity

Host: Justine Willis Toms    Interview Date: 7/3/2026   Program Number: 3866

Music Playlist

Album: Medicine Music
Artist: Bobby McFerrin
Track: 05 Common Threads