Publishers Weekly
07/29/2024
In this perceptive account, political scientist Han (Prisms of the People) traces the evolution of a racial justice organization founded in 2016 at a Cincinnati megachurch. Sparked by the “outpouring of support” for pastor Chuck Mingo’s sermons on racial injustice, the Undivided program developed as a six-week curriculum that examined “personal prejudice” as well as systemic racism, with participants split into small, mixed-race discussion groups. Han follows three of those participants through and after the program: Jess, a white recovering heroin addict, who began working at a prison ministry and spreading antiracist messages to friends and family; Grant, a white, conservative man with a Black brother, who grappled with the disparate parts of his identity; and Sandra, a Black woman who got divorced from her white husband after he began to chafe against her participation in Undivided and eventually found his way to white nationalist communities online. In the process, the author movingly links the expected finding—that meaningful social change begins in communities in which people are rooted and interconnected—with a Christian concept of grace that, for Undivided’s participants, “manifested itself as the courage to fight for one another’s dignity.” Rigorously researched and richly nuanced, this deserves wide readership. (Sept.)
From the Publisher
A masterful feat of elegant storytelling and rigorous research, Undivided invigorates readers with an astonishing example of what it takes to make real change, even in the context of deep polarization and racialized subjugation.”
—Jennifer Parker, editor Hammer and Hope
"Building a truly multiracial democracy is the great political challenge of our time. The last half century has taught us that changing national laws and policies is the easy part; multiracial democracy won’t take root, however, until society itself transforms. In this beautifully-written book, Hahrie Han offers us a glimpse into how that might be done. Drawing on deep research into the experience of a single church community, Undivided offers a powerful lesson: building sustainable racial solidarity is slow, hard work, filled with uncertainty. There is no playbook or formula—only trial and error. And it is done from the bottom up, though relationships. Any American concerned with the future of our democracy should read this book.”
—Steven Levitsky, co-author of How Democracies Die
“Undivided feels like it is written by someone who understands and, dare I say, loves the church. And because of that, the book catches the church doing right, and praises it, but also challenges it to do better.”
—Dave Ferguson, author of B.L.E.S.S.: 5 Everyday Ways To Love Your Neighbor & Change The World
“Undivided is a remarkable book that takes readers on a poignant journey through the messy complexities of faith, racism, and personal transformation in a painfully fraught political world. It is a meaningful, person-centered, richly informed reflection on the problems and possibilities of faith-based, community-rooted solidarity. Undivided inspires, challenges, and opens its readers eyes to the difficult realities of how personal and political change happen in people's lives. Eschewing easy answers or simple solutions, Hahrie Han brilliantly illuminates an uncertain yet hope-filled path towards collective enactment of racial justice in the United States.”
—Jamila Michener, director of the Center for Racial Justice and Equitable Futures, Cornell University
“In Undivided, Hahrie Han has given us a brilliant, intimate, and moving story of real people working for true actionable change and transformative justice within their communities. Deeply researched and immersive, Undivided offers a critical and ground-breaking intervention into a surprising tale that recenters our understanding of American social movements, religion, race, and democracy.”
—Leah Wright Rigueur, author of The Loneliness of the Black Republican
“Hahrie Han has put heart and soul into telling the inspiring story of a beacon of racial progress that may seem unlikely: a program for working-class people at a Midwestern evangelical megachurch. With wisdom, humanity, and great narrative skill, Han persuades us that there is a way forward in the struggle against racism, if we are willing to be patient, to trust one another, and to operate from shared faith.”
—Nicholas Lemann, author of Transaction Man
“A compellingly written, meticulously researched, on the ground examination of the relationship between the Evangelicalism and racism. Driven by stories of ordinary people struggling for racial justice, this book opens up a landscape beyond the headlines and social media feeds, offering hope and insight about how to address America’s original sin. In doing so, it offers pastoral wisdom for church and social movement leaders to understand better the dynamics of organizing for real change.”
—Luke Bretherton, Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology, Oxford University
“Perceptive . . . Rigorously researched and richly nuanced, this deserves wide readership.”
—Publishers Weekly
“[Undivided] ably charts that course even as it illustrates the Christian concept of grace in action. Inspiring: a key text for any reader seeking strategies for racial reconciliation—or at least beginning to talk about it.”
—Kirkus Reviews
Kirkus Reviews
2024-08-02
An evangelical megachurch struggles to reckon with systemic racism and inequity.
In 2016, in Cincinnati, voters overwhelmingly approved raising their taxes to fund city preschools, “with targeted resources for poor—mostly Black—communities.” Johns Hopkins political scientist Han took note, especially because the numbers were markedly different in the presidential election: Cincinnati went for Clinton by 10 points, but the voters approved the school initiative by 24, so that “thousands of voters who supported Trump must have also supported Issue 44.” Digging deeper, Han discovered that a Cincinnati megachurch called Crossroads had mounted an antiracism training program called Undivided, one of whose outcomes was that many conservative members supported more funding for minority schools by way of a curriculum very much like the “diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) training programs that pervaded corporate America”—a source of loud outrage for right-wing politicians. Han examines the many paths Crossroads clergy, staff, and parishioners took to arrive at views about structural racism that, as Han writes, defy received wisdom about evangelicals on many points. It helped that the megachurch’s demographics skewed younger and more racially diverse than most, with many members who “believed the core theological tenets of evangelicalism, but explicitly or implicitly rejected the right-wing politics associated with it.” Many of those members also voted for Trump, but no one can doubt that on some matters concerning race, doors to understanding were opened rather than slammed shut. “At the most basic level,” writes Han, “Undivided equipped [its] participants to understand both the interpersonal and systemic dimensions of racial injustice and offered them tools to have difficult conversations around race.” Her book ably charts that course even as it illustrates the Christian concept of grace in action.
Inspiring: a key text for any reader seeking strategies for racial reconciliation—or at least beginning to talk about it.
