Stephen V. Sprinkle introduces the ethos of Unfinished Lives by quoting Minerva from Midnight in The Garden of Good and Evil: “Boy! Take these words to heart. To understand the living…you got to commune with the dead.” Sprinkle, an ordained minister endorsed by the Alliance, delves into 14 life stories of people who share a powerful common bond: Hate crimes robbed each one of a full life. The perpetrators of these crimes justified their actions by citing the victims’ actual or perceived deviation from expected gender and/or sexual norms. Sprinkle frames these painful, all-too-familiar stories in theological terms: The perpetrators are guilty of deliberately desecrating the image of God inherent in every human being.

With Unfinished Lives, Sprinkle hopes to shift the current conversation about targeted violence against LGBTQ people. Rather than focusing on statistics that easily dehumanize tragedy, Sprinkle professes that each story reveals an embodied human being. Hate crimes are bodily crimes and bodies matter––to both human beings and God. Hate crimes violate not only the victims themselves, but also their families, friends and communities. Such brutality aims to force conformity to the perpetrators’ perception of societal norms, which they often justify as divinely ordained. Sprinkle moves beyond the overwhelming statistics to reveal the particular humanity of each victim. He delicately connects his readers with the victims’ stories by uncovering the collected artifacts of their humanity. Unfinished Lives issues a prophetic call for the violence and terror to cease. All those who hear share the responsibility of restoring the Imago Dei of the victims.

As I read Sprinkle’s powerful remembrance, I resonated with the story of Ryan Skipper, a native of Auburndale, a small town in Florida not far from the town where I attended college. Ryan died 11 miles from the places that marked my college experience. I remember the long drives on the narrow streets through landscape marked by orange trees and cattle. I often visited friends in the town where he lived—Wahneta was home to many young people and college students who needed to economize on rent. Ryan worked at a mall I liked to wander through. Reading his story, I discovered we shared a love of road trips to Orlando and Tampa and messing with computers. Ryan’s life and death struck a familiar, yet disconcerting, cord.

Ryan’s story exposes the wounds and scars of our Christian inheritance. Sprinkle reveals not only our culture’s complicity in Ryan’s death, but also Christian theological complicity. Ryan’s story, like many of the other unfinished lives, is messy and recounts his own struggles to come to terms with his identity. He was trying to buy marijuana when attacked. The sheriff who investigated Ryan’s murder took a “he-got-what-he-deserved” approach. Law officials and churchgoers often prefer to ignore the deeper and tortured realities that hate crimes bring to light. 

Many who encounter the circumstances of hate-crime deaths prefer to suppress the news or to excuse the horror due to some fault of the victims. Sprinkle advocates for public lament and outcry so that families, friends and communities can openly attend to their grief. Rather than conveniently holding tragedy at arms length, Sprinkle engages the outrage of these unfinished lives. Only public mourning and prophetic cries for justice prepare the way for transformation. Unfinished Lives must speak for themselves, Sprinkle says. May we all be attentive and active listeners.

To learn more about Unfinished Lives, visit the online site: Unfinished Lives Project. The book may be ordered from: Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, and the publisher Wipf & Stock.

Stephen V. Sprinkle is Director of Field Education and Supervised Ministry and Associate Professor of Practical Theology at Brite Divinity School, Fort Worth, Texas, a post he has held since 1994. An ordained Baptist minister, he is the first open-and-out-Gay scholar in the history of the Divinity School, and the first-open-and-out-LGBTQ person to be tenured there.His email address is steve@unfinishedlivesblog.com

Adam DJ Brett is a Th.M. student in theology at Brite Divinity School graduating in May 2011. By graduation, he will have also earned a graduate certificate in Women’s Studies from Texas Christian University. Adam participates in a progressive welcoming and affirming congregation in Dallas that affiliates with the Alliance of Baptists, Church in the Cliff, where he is pursuing ordination. Adam’s partner is the Rev. Stephanie Wyatt. His email address is adam@adamdjbrett.com