239th Annual Convention

Catherine Meeks, PhD, a 2022 recipient of the President Joseph R. Biden Lifetime Achievement Award for Service is Executive Director of the Absalom Jones Center for Racial Healing. Prior to the center’s opening she chaired its precursor, Beloved Community: Commission for Dismantling Racism for the Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta.
Catherine is the retired Clara Carter Acree Distinguished Professor of Socio-Cultural Studies from Wesleyan College and Founding Executive Director of the Lane Center for Community Engagement and Service. She characterizes herself as a midwife to the soul of her students and workshop participants. She has spent many years sharing the insights that she gained from her pursuit of the truth. She has had many great teachers including her sons, the Bible, Jungian psychology, cross cultural stories and other books of wisdom.  But her greatest teacher is rheumatoid arthritis because it has forced her to learn many new ways to listen to her body and to pay attention to the messages from her heart. 

She is frequently asked to present commentaries on Georgia Public Radio and other radio and television programs. She is the author of six books and one inspirational CD. Her latest book is The Night Is Long, But Light Comes In The Morning: Meditations on Racial Healing and she is the editor of the bestselling book, Living Into God’s Dream: Dismantling Racism in America and co-author of Passionate for Justice: Ida B Wells as Prophet for Our Times. Her Memoir, The Quilted Life, Reflections of a Sharecropper’s Daughter will be published in February 2024 by Eerdmans Publishers.

 She holds a master’s degree in social work from Clark Atlanta University and PhD from Emory University. In May of this year, she received three honorary doctorates, Doctor of Divinity from Virginia Theological Seminary and Doctor of Humane Letters from the Seminary of the Southwest. She will receive a third Doctor of Divinity from the Berkeley Divinity School at Yale in 2024 but the conferral is being delayed due to scheduling conflicts.