In this 2026 interview with Justine Willis Toms, theologian Dr. Catherine Meeks draws on her roots as a Black sharecropper’s daughter and decades of civil rights work. Blending memoir and insight, she explores systemic injustice, calls for inner and collective transformation, and urges a unified, liberatory path beyond division.

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. Her 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)

Interview Date: 7/3/2026 **Tags:**Catherine Meeks, Racial healing, systemic racism, Jim Crow South, contemplative practice, civil rights, Absalom Jones Center, Turquoise Lavender Institute, social justice, spirituality and activism, Social Change/Politics, Racism, Spirituality

Healing Racism with a Community of Allies

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