Jim Lewis was born in Baltimore, Maryland. He is a graduate of Washington & Lee University and Virginia Theological Seminary. Jim has been actively engaged, over the past 40 years, addressing the social issues in local communities he’s served as an Episcopal clergyperson. Serving churches and dioceses in Maryland, West Virginia, Michigan, North Carolina, and Delaware, he has organized parishes and communities around such issues as health care for women, child care, AIDS, prison and criminal justice issues, capital punishment, antiwar organizing, GLBT rights, housing issues, and racial equality. Jim has been active in war and peace issues since coming out of the U.S. Marine Corps where he was an infantry officer.
In 1976, as the rector of St John’s Episcopal Church, Charleston, Jim opened the church to the first gay and lesbian support group. He also performed two gay blessings at the church which brought gay and lesbian issues to the forefront of the church’s life in the community. In North Carolina, Jim helped organize the Raleigh Religious Network for Gay and Lesbian Equality and lobbied the legislature in support of GLBT issues. For the second time in his ministry, he was threatened with an ecclesiastical trial for his willingness to perform gay blessings.
Of particular note is the work that Jim conducted on the Delmarva Peninsula (the Eastern Shore of Maryland, Delaware and Virginia). It was there that poultry process plant workers, chicken catchers, poultry farmers, environmentalists, unions, and community churches came together to form the Delmarva Poultry Justice Alliance, an organization addressing the injustices and abuses in the poultry industry. That work was featured in a 1999 “Sixty Minutes” piece with Mike Wallace. This work in the Delmarva also involved the creation of a Latino community center, a health clinic for the poor, a shelter for battered Latina women, and a program to assist men coming out of prison.
Jim received the West Virginia Governor’s Martin Luther King, Jr. “Living the Dream” award in 1991 and was honored in Delaware by Pacem in Terris in October, 2001, as a “Peacemaker Among Us.” He holds an honorary doctorate from Virginia Theological Seminary.
Jim is the author of West Virginia Pilgrim (Seabury Press); The Gulf War: The Churches & Peacemaking (North Carolina Council of Churches); and has contributed to Strike Terror No More: Theology, Ethics, and the New War (Chalice Press) and Workers Rights as Human Rights (Cornell University Press). Jim also writes a regular online newsletter, “Notes From Under the Fig Tree.”
Active in anti-death penalty work in West Virginia, Michigan, North Carolina and Delaware, Jim was one of the founders of People of Faith Against the Death Penalty in North Carolina. Jim has done civil disobedience around coal mine issues, U.S. involvement in war in Central America, and poultry labor issues. Over the years, he has made peace and justice trips to Libya, Israel and Palestine, Jordan, Cuba, Central America, and Iraq. Since returning to Charleston, he has been actively involved in organizing West Virginia Patriots for Peace.
Jim is married to Judy Graham Lewis. They have a son, three daughters, and nine grandchildren.
Please join us 6:00 PM Saturday evening, June 6, at the Charleston House Holiday Inn for the Power of One Award Dinner. Tickets are $35 per person, which also gets you free admission to the Rainbow Party at the same location immediately following the dinner. Please click here to purchase tickets online using Paypal or else write to contact@pridewv.org for more information.