Graduation Date
5-2016
Document Type
Senior Thesis (Campus only Access)
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts
Department
Humanities and Cultural Studies
Department or Program Chair
Chase B. Clow, PhD
First Reader
Gay Lynch, PhD
Abstract
For over fifty years Cecil Williams and his wife Janice Mirkitani, as well as additional ministers, a full office staff, and thousands of volunteers have made Glide Memorial more than your average Methodist Church. Glide serves over three thousand meals a day 365 days a year. In addition to its meal program, the church helps the homeless marginalized members of San Francisco to find housing, jobs, medical care, child care, and, most importantly, a future. A suffering economy, characterized by poverty, drug abuse, violence and despair continues to persist in San Francisco, as it does across our country. Glide has become a place where social justice has continually been victorious over hopelessness. It is a community that accepts all races, classes, genders, ages and sexual orientations. This paper examines the affects that unconditional love and acceptance have had on the Tenderloin community and shows what Glide does in the name of humanity and compassion. In the end, we will see unconditional love and compassion as catalysts of profound transformation.