Barbara Holmes taught us to see our cosmic ties

Barbara Ann Holmes was a spiritual visionary who perceived deeper, broader, and wider than those around her. She brought new conversation partners into ongoing discussions, with a constant eye toward activism, mysticism, liberation, and community.

By the time the religious academy had the opportunity to read Holmes’s books, she had already pursued three different careers. Before earning her PhD in ethics at Vanderbilt University, she had been an early childhood educator, a professional actor, and a corporate attorney. These experiences seeped into her religious writings and leadership through her commitments to education, creativity, and justice.

Holmes saw beneath the surface of who and what she studied. In her first book, A Private Woman in Public Spaces, Holmes examined the writings and speeches of Barbara Jordan, best known as the first African American congresswoman elected from Texas since Reconstruction. Through Holmes’s eyes, Jordan was more than a politician; she was an ethicist and theologian in the public sphere. Holmes helped readers peel back the layers of what we see on the surface to look for the more that is there.