Dawn Araujo-Hawkins

Religion Journalist

Topeka, Kansas

Lady journo writing religion at the Global Sisters Report | Proud Ball State University alumna | Prolific em dasher Real Housewives GIFer

Dawn Araujo-Hawkins

Religion Journalist

Topeka, Kansas

Lady journo writing religion at the Global Sisters Report | Proud Ball State University alumna | Prolific em dasher Real Housewives GIFer

U.S. food justice
A two-part series looking at food access in the United States.
Global Sisters Report
Social Justice Women Religious
What It Means to Burn Down a Black Church
Some 60 years ago, the burning of black churches was a common form of racial violence; according to civil rights historian Taylor Branch, at the height of the civil rights movement, a black church was bombed or burned every week. Most historians agree that back then, opponents of black civil rights saw the burning of black churches as a way to reinforce pre-Civil War power structures, some of which had been legally dismantled with the abolition of slavery.
The Local Church
Evangelicals Faith and Race
America's Prisons
A four-part series looking at mass incarceration and the Catholic sisters trying to end it.
Global Sisters Report
Faith and Race Social Justice Women Religious
A Jew, a Christian, and a Muslim walk into a parking lot...
IN FALL 1884, the congregation that became Temple Israel opened its doors as the first Jewish synagogue in the state of Nebraska. From its inception, Temple Israel was a Reform congregation, a theologically progressive denomination that stresses the social justice imperatives of Judaism. Yet the early members of Temple Israel included not just Reform Jews, but Conservative and Orthodox Jews as well; navigating these interdenominational relationships would prove to be a significant part of the congregation’s early development.
Sojourners
Judaism Mainline Christianity Social Justice
Student loan debt stands between some would-be sisters and their vocations
In the last decade, student loan debt in the United States has become a nearly inescapable problem. Experts now use words like "staggering" and "crisis" to describe the fact that some 40 million adults in the U.S. carry college debt to the collective tune of a record-breaking $1.2 trillion. Case in point: A recent Brookings Institution study found that between 2004 and 2012, not only did the number of students borrowing for their education increase by 70 percent, so too did the amount the average student owed.
Global Sisters Report
Millennials Women Religious
Human trafficking in the US: Sisters' networks and ministries break the cycle one life at a time
Crystal was 13 years old when she met her pimp. Of course, she didn’t think of him as a pimp; he was her boyfriend, her savior, the man who doted on her and gave her the things her parents couldn’t or wouldn’t provide. “You know how you’re a little girl and you dream of Prince Charming? Well, he was Prince Charming,” Crystal said from her home in Watertown, South Dakota.
Global Sisters Report
Social Justice Women Religious Women and Girls
Bearing witness, being church: Dominican sisters in Iraq
In the middle of makeshift refugee camps, the Dominican Sisters of St. Catherine of Siena are trying to make life work. They get up every morning for prayer, and then they spend the rest of the day visiting the thousands of Iraqi refugees living in the abandoned malls and unfinished construction sites of Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan.
Global Sisters Report
Women Religious
A ministry at the top of the world
For most of the year, Tuktoyaktuk is accessible only by air. In the winter, however, it’s a different story. Then – when the temperature has dropped to 40 degrees below zero – then you can reach the tiny hamlet perched above the Arctic Circle via the Winter Road, that is, on an icy pathway on top of the frozen Arctic Ocean.
Global Sisters Report
Faith and Race Social Justice Women Religious
Acting on a deep call to a different ministry
Former Franciscan sister Nancy Meyer, right, being ordained as bishop of the Midwest region of Roman Catholic Womenpriests in June. If there’s one thing Mary Bergan Blanchard wants to make clear, it’s this: she is definitely not a radical. “I’m too old to be a radical,” she said, laughing. “I’m too practical.”.
Global Sisters Report
Women Religious Women and Girls
Religious Formation Conference at 60: 'Relocating the Prophetic Witness of Religious Life'
Members of the Religious Formation Conference discuss changes at the 2013 congress meeting, "Rooted in the Mission of Jesus: Reaching Out to the Margins." Looking out a window in the tiny offices housing the Religious Formation Conference, it’s hard not to notice the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' headquarters next door, towering above everything else in all its stone and glassiness.
Global Sisters Report
Women and Girls Women Religious
Women's voices in journalism are essential to true history
Last week was an interesting one for females in journalism. In one day, two women were ousted from the top editor position at an international paper – Jill Abramson at The New York Times (U.S.) and Natalie Nougayrède at Le Monde (France). Both had been the first woman to hold her position at each establishment, and in the maelstrom that erupted across the Internet following their departures, there were many questions about the role gender had played: Why are women leaders perceived as pushy?
Global Sisters Report
Women and Girls
Grace-Filled Moments
ON A COOL, windy October evening, the family of 23-year-old Dominic Amey Jr. stands outside and waits. They’re waiting for someone to tell them how and why Amey, a father of three, was shot and killed behind the house a week before. So they pray and they wait. But there aren’t any answers—at least none that night.
Sojourners
Evangelicals Social Justice
Taken by storm
Nearly a decade after Katrina, New Orleans’ poor and black still struggle to rebuild their lives. Nothing could have prepared Jean Marie Peacock for what she saw when she returned to her New Orleans home after Hurricane Katrina. She had boarded up her home before evacuating the city, yet six feet of water had remained, stagnating for weeks.
Presbyterians Today
Faith and Race Social Justice Mainline Christianity
Were 33 Christians in North Korea Really Up For Execution?
If you run in certain Facebook circles, you’ve likely already read that North Korean leader Kim Jung-un has called for the execution of 33 North Korean Christians. According to the widely circulated reports, these 33 people were detained after it was discovered they had ties to Kim Jung-wook, a South Korean missionary whose arrest for religious activity last year has made international headlines.
Christ and Pop Culture
Evangelicals
The Big Chop: A Theology of Natural Hair
On Jan. 13, Tamera Mowry-Housely, co-host of The Real (and formerly one half of ABC’s Sister, Sister and E!’s Tia & Tamera ), took to social media to rave about her new haircut. Posting an Instagram photo with an accompanying tweet reading, “Love my big chop…love my curl doctor @shaiamiel You did it again.”.
Christ and Pop Culture
Faith and Race Evangelicals Pop Culture
During the Olympics, Russian Christians Work for Reform and Revival
The Sochi Games were mired in controversy before they even began. It wasn’t supposed to be that way. The first Russian Games since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Sochi was supposed to show the world just how far Russia has come in the last 23 years. It was supposed to change the perception of Russia held by those whose international sympathies were forged during the Cold War.
Christ and Pop Culture
Pop Culture Evangelicals

About

Dawn Araujo-Hawkins

I am a staff writer for the Global Sisters Report, a special project of the National Catholic Reporter that provides coverage of Catholic sisters and nuns.

I graduated from Ball State University with a degree in magazine journalism and French and then studied urban and intercultural issues at Cincinnati Christian University, earning a Master of Arts in Religion.

I have a tenacious faith in the necessity of print media. I love em dashes and semicolons, but my relationship with the Oxford comma is evolving. My longstanding aversion to the inverted pyramid is well-documented.