Abstract
This essay begins in an urban park in Atlanta, Georgia where the author became the victim of a violent hate crime. Noblitt is a United Methodist minister, trained in a Christian tradition of forgiveness, grace, and unconditional love. Committed to and trained in restorative justice, Noblitt also tried to recognize and honor the needs of victims in death penalty trials. This essay narrates the attack, the court proceedings that followed, and the ways in which Noblitt worked for restoration in the community, in his own life, and with the young men who beat him. He describes the resistance and restorative strategies that he employed and offers an honest account of the difficulties he encountered while pursuing them.
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Notes
- 1.
Federal Bureau of Investigation, Uniform Crime Reports: https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/ucr-publications#Hate.
- 2.
Ibid.
- 3.
See, for example, Howard Zehr, Changing Lenses: A New Focus for Crime and Justice (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1990).
- 4.
This question reflects the methods of Solution-Focused Brief Therapy. See, for example, steve de shazer and yvonne Dolan, More than Miracles: The State of the Art of Solution-Focused Brief Therapy (Haworth Brief Therapy).
- 5.
For theoretical resources and additional description on reclaiming spaces through ritual, see Lisa Schirch, Ritual and Symbolic Peacebuilding (Boulder: Kumarian Press, 2014).
- 6.
For more information about this campaign, visit http://www.noh8campaign.com/.
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Noblitt, J.M. (2016). Living a Life of Love in the Midst of Trauma. In: Ott Marshall, E. (eds) Conflict Transformation and Religion. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56840-3_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56840-3_5
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