To a packed auditorium at the Salt Lake City Public Library on January 21, 2026, Father Gregory Boyle shared what he has learned from building Homeboy Industries—and, more broadly, how to practice a kinship that can withstand shame, trauma, and the reflex to throw people away. Boyle, a Jesuit priest, is the founder of Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles, which helps former gang members and formerly incarcerated people rebuild their lives. It is now one of the most comprehensive reentry organizations in the country, and has been a model for similar programs around the world. 

Through moving anecdotes and self-deprecating jokes, Boyle presented a theological and ethical vision of compassion as a practiced way of seeing others, rather than an overdetermined sentiment. He stressed that one does not go to communities in need to change them, but to be changed oneself. Compassion, in this view, is not a professional skill for fixing people, nor a badge earned by proximity to suffering. “Stop trying to reach them; ask if you can be reached by them. Let your heart be altered. Then you inhabit mutual dignity and nobility, and it’s eternally replenishing.” Boyle recounted several examples of this compassion at work in his own experience and throughout Homeboy Industries. 

Central to his approach and to many of his examples is attachment, a crucial dimension of psychological and spiritual development—from childhood through reentry. The lack of trustworthy caregivers early in life is mirrored in a lack of connection in adulthood;  Reclamation from gang life and crime is therefore less a story of moral stricture or proven worthiness than the repair of broken attachments and the slow unlearning of the adaptations that broken attachment demands. Boyle described each person who walks into Homeboy as barricaded behind a wall of shame and disgrace. Only through compassionate recognition—through being seen rather than merely watched—can that wall be scaled. The most decisive “intervention” is often not a rule or a consequence, but a greeting that communicates, with disarming simplicity: you are here, and your presence is not a problem to be solved.

For Boyle, the opposite of kinship is not disagreement but othering: the manufacture of categories of disposable people. Against this impulse, he urged the audience to practice what Ignatius of Loyola called acatamiento—which Boyle glossed as “affectionate awe”—a reverent attention to what the poor and wounded carry, rather than a judgment about how they carry it.

A book-signing followed Boyle’s lecture, in partnership with The King’s English Bookshop. Several audience members shared with Boyle his work’s deep impact on them. 

Boyle’s awards include Humanitarian of the Year from the James Beard Foundation, the Laetare Medal from the University of Notre Dame, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. His most recent book is Cherished Belonging: The Healing Power of Love in Divided Times. 

Boyle’s lecture was the 2026 Sterling M. McMurrin Lecture in Religion and Culture. Last year’s lecture was by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. 

Robert Carson — Associate Director, Tanner Humanities Center

About Sterling M. McMurrin (1914–1996) 

Sterling M. McMurrin’s career spanned roles as teacher, scholar, administrator, and advisor to major corporations, foundations, and federal agencies. After earning his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the University of Utah and PhD at the University of Southern California, he joined the University of Utah as Professor of Philosophy in 1948.

McMurrin served as United States Commissioner of Education in the Kennedy Administration before returning to the University of Utah. There, he held faculty appointments in Philosophy, History, and Educational Administration, along with administrative positions including Dean of the College of Letters and Science, and Provost. He was the university’s first Distinguished Professor and the first recipient of the prestigious Rosenblatt Prize. He was also a founding member of the Tanner Lectures on Human Values.

Throughout his career, McMurrin received numerous honorary degrees from institutions nationwide. He was known for his extensive lectures and writings on the history and philosophy of religion until his death in 1996.

The Sterling M. McMurrin Lectures on Religion and Culture were founded by Dr. McMurrin, Lowell M. Durham Jr. (Director of the Tanner Humanities Center from 1992–1997), and friends Richard Smoot, Peter Appleby, Jack Newell, Brigham Madsen, and Boyer Jarvis.

Views expressed in Tanner Humanities Center events do not represent the official position of the Center or the University of Utah.