By RAY WADDLE

"I dont believe God gives up on anyone," Harmon Wray once told me. "And neither should we."

A chat with Harmon, with that soothing baritone of his, always left me feeling clear-headed, braver, able to see a way forward.

Harmon had that effect on people, and this week they are grieving. He died of a stroke on Tuesday, age 60, a deep loss to the cause of humane religion, death penalty abolition and friendship to the forgotten faces of incarceration — individuals who are made in the image of God like everyone else.

Others might debate or complicate the Christian life, but Harmon kept his work-a-day theology simple. He followed Jesus, which meant paying unusual attention to things the Lord said: Honor the least of these, tell the good news to the poor, visit the prisoners.

Certain values flowed from this. Harmon didnt worship money, ego or careerism. For decades he pieced together a livelihood doing unglamorous work. His life is a rebuke to a distracted, addicted, conflicted, trigger-happy society that is no longer sure what it stands for.

Harmon grew up in Memphis, and by the mysteries of family upbringing and divine grace, a laser-focused message got through to him early: everybody matters to God, everybody is wounded; nobody is superior. All of humanity needs transformation.

That includes institutions. The Southern (the American) way of religion sees the spiritual problem as intensely personal. The individual is sinful; the individual needs a personal walk with Jesus. Somehow, this Southerner found a broader horizon. Harmon saw that faith cannot ignore collective evils, boardroom bigotries and foreign policy atrocities as sinful, too. This includes the crushing effect of inflexible bureaucracies on the souls of powerless people.

For 30 years, his special gift was to befriend prisoners and agitate for prison reform. He said our bloated prison system has failed to give us a sense of security or live up to American commitments to equality and justice. The system penalizes people who cannot afford lawyers and lets respectable criminals get away.
Harmon was a shrewd student of bureaucracy, patiently advocating dignified improvements. He will always be a legend at Riverbend prison, where he introduced innovative classes on criminal justice and theology, attracting many talented, studious prisoners.

He was legendary, too, at Vanderbilt Divinity School for the epic time (years) he spent (not) finishing his Ph.D. He cared more about being on the front lines.

But he will always be part of the Vanderbilt story for having educated the Divinity community about justice struggles.

Tennessee confronts the numbing loss of Harmon Wray, but the many tributes to him this week prove he left his imprint, a compass for the way forward.