Brandon Dawson Brandon Dawson is a parishioner at Ss. Peter &
Both of your parents are Black?
Paul Orthodox Church in Jersey City, N.J. So what’s your story?
I grew up near Los Angeles, primarily in South Pasadena in Hollywood Hills. I didn't come to the East Coast until 1989. My parents were separated, so I lived with my mother and stepfather in California. When I was 17, I came to New Jersey — to South Orange — to live with my father, so I could get to know him and be closer. I grew up in an upper middle-class family. Both my stepfather and father are doctors, and my mother is a nurse. I have a degree in Biblical theology from Moody Bible Institute. Now I work at Audible, the audiobook company. Before 2017, I worked for 20 years in an acute-care psychiatric unit. jacob's well
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Yes. My father is from St. Thomas, in the Virgin Islands. My mother, memory eternal, passed away in 2019. She grew up in North Carolina. When we were growing up, we went to a Baptist church. That’s where I was formally baptized — I would say probably in the sixth grade. If you chose to attend a Bible school for college, you must have taken your faith pretty seriously as a teenager.
No, actually, I didn’t. I was pretty introverted; I was part of the nerdy group. It’s not like I was living a wild, hedonistic, adolescent life. I went to church every week. But I wasn’t living by the faith I professed. I grew up in a very difficult home — my
