His Stigma became His Glory

Sociologist Erving Goffman wrote in his classic study Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity that the term stigma originated with the ancient Greeks, roughly during Jesus’ time. Initially a “stigma” was a mark branded on the body of a disgraced individual—a criminal or a slave. The term came to refer to any characteristic that makes its bearer unwanted, such as those related to physical disability…