The Face of Hate and the Transformation of Love: A Personal Reflection
Rev. Joshua Noblitt
The opening worship for My Brother’s Keeper included music led by MIND’s own Nehemiah Luckett, Jayson Dobney and Jorge Lockward, and a meditation by Rev. Joshua Noblitt.
Rev. Noblitt is the minister of social justice at Saint Mark’s UMC in Atlanta, GA. He received his MDiv degree from Candler School of Theology at Emory in 2004 and was ordained as a deacon in the UMC’s Western North Carolina Annual Conference in 2009. Rev. Noblitt’s specialized ministry involves working against the death penalty in Georgia as a mitigation specialist at the Federal Defender Program for the Northern District of Georgia.
But it is more than his longstanding commitment to working for justice within the criminal justice system that brings him all the way from Atlanta to New York City for this event. This past July hate violence became flesh-and-blood reality for him, suddenly deeply personal as he found himself on the wrong end of a stick and a gun as he and his partner were attacked for being gay.
Rev. Noblitt’s response to the incident, movingly summarized in an “open letter to the beloved community” he published two weeks after the attack, is a model for faith communities seeking to respond with justice and love to problems of bigotry, hate and violence.
As his personal experience continues to reverberate through his life and inform his social justice ministry, Rev. Noblitt joined us for the day and shared both his passionate commitment and his unique perspective.
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