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At age nineteen I married a seminary student with a student pastoral charge in rural Ohio. For most of the next forty-two years I was a pastor’s wife.
The seminary professors and dean of the school had been active in the Civil Rights movement. We were Social Gospel progressives by education and inclination. My husband served in the Philadelphia area and in Michigan, with churches in the inner city, a large city, the suburbs of a large city, and in rural churches in small towns and resort towns. All but one church was exclusively white and leaned conservative.
The last church split over the church’s social creed on abortion, which read that it was a regrettable but sometimes necessary choice to save the life of the mother. They were anti LGBTQ. This was an area where the KKK was still present and that voted for Trump in 2016. The element that left the church had been vicious and divisive, more intent on harm than transformation.
When Undivided was offered to me by the publisher I thought I would check it out but was uncertain about it. I found it fascinating, inspiring, and frustrating.
The book’s start was in an academic project by Hahrie Han, who was studying grassroots organizing campaigns. She was struck by the idea of a Protestant evangelical megachurch, predominately white in “numbers and culture,” had become involved with promoting a policy that added the Black community. Issue 44 addressed racial disparities and universal preschool in Cincinnati. “Thousands of voters who supported Trump must have also supported Issue 44,” she knew. She traced the movement to a group of volunteers from the Crossroads church, all of whom had participated in a racial justice program called Undivided. Not only had the participants talked about race, they were impelled to put what they had learned into action.
This book, based on seven years of reporting, is a history of how Undivided came to be, the people whose lives it impacted, and its legacy. We learn about the transformative power of communicating and befriending people across the color line, and about the limits of any organization–or church–to change.
It began when an African American pastor knew it was time to stop avoiding the hard conversations, and in a Sunday morning sermon shared his anger and frustration. He was supported to create a small group experience that brought together black and white members of the parish. The book takes us into the lives of some of these people, showing how they were transformed because of Undivided.
She originally thought the goal of the six-week program was to inspire people’s journey toward antiracism. But Jess realized that the true impact of Undivided was not as a prejudice reduction program, but rather as a learning experience that lit the tinder. from Undivided by Hahrie Han
The success stories are inspiring. But the book also shows how hard it is for any institution to change. The lack of their church’s action to take a stance against police violence against black men and to support the Black Lives Matter movement angered some of the Undivided members. The church leaders were trying to keep to the middle ground so as to not alienate anyone.
The program, Han writes, didn’t work by converting committed white supremacists, but by equipping “the other evangelicals” to understand “the interpersonal and systemic dimensions of racial injustice and offered them tools to have difficult conversations around race.”
I was interested to learn that other Evangelical church adopted the Undivided program, including one a few miles away from where I live.
Thanks to the publisher for a free book through NetGalley.
The seminary professors and dean of the school had been active in the Civil Rights movement. We were Social Gospel progressives by education and inclination. My husband served in the Philadelphia area and in Michigan, with churches in the inner city, a large city, the suburbs of a large city, and in rural churches in small towns and resort towns. All but one church was exclusively white and leaned conservative.
The last church split over the church’s social creed on abortion, which read that it was a regrettable but sometimes necessary choice to save the life of the mother. They were anti LGBTQ. This was an area where the KKK was still present and that voted for Trump in 2016. The element that left the church had been vicious and divisive, more intent on harm than transformation.
When Undivided was offered to me by the publisher I thought I would check it out but was uncertain about it. I found it fascinating, inspiring, and frustrating.
The book’s start was in an academic project by Hahrie Han, who was studying grassroots organizing campaigns. She was struck by the idea of a Protestant evangelical megachurch, predominately white in “numbers and culture,” had become involved with promoting a policy that added the Black community. Issue 44 addressed racial disparities and universal preschool in Cincinnati. “Thousands of voters who supported Trump must have also supported Issue 44,” she knew. She traced the movement to a group of volunteers from the Crossroads church, all of whom had participated in a racial justice program called Undivided. Not only had the participants talked about race, they were impelled to put what they had learned into action.
This book, based on seven years of reporting, is a history of how Undivided came to be, the people whose lives it impacted, and its legacy. We learn about the transformative power of communicating and befriending people across the color line, and about the limits of any organization–or church–to change.
It began when an African American pastor knew it was time to stop avoiding the hard conversations, and in a Sunday morning sermon shared his anger and frustration. He was supported to create a small group experience that brought together black and white members of the parish. The book takes us into the lives of some of these people, showing how they were transformed because of Undivided.
She originally thought the goal of the six-week program was to inspire people’s journey toward antiracism. But Jess realized that the true impact of Undivided was not as a prejudice reduction program, but rather as a learning experience that lit the tinder. from Undivided by Hahrie Han
The success stories are inspiring. But the book also shows how hard it is for any institution to change. The lack of their church’s action to take a stance against police violence against black men and to support the Black Lives Matter movement angered some of the Undivided members. The church leaders were trying to keep to the middle ground so as to not alienate anyone.
The program, Han writes, didn’t work by converting committed white supremacists, but by equipping “the other evangelicals” to understand “the interpersonal and systemic dimensions of racial injustice and offered them tools to have difficult conversations around race.”
I was interested to learn that other Evangelical church adopted the Undivided program, including one a few miles away from where I live.
Thanks to the publisher for a free book through NetGalley.