Hahrie Han's book garners wide praise

Four years ago The Hub highlighted research into grassroots organizing conducted by Hahrie Han, a political scientist and director of the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University. Today, Han has captured her research about a Cincinnati evangelical megachurch called Crossroads in her latest book, Undivided: The Quest for Racial Solidarity in an American Church.

The book has received critical praise from both The New Yorker and The New York Times. In a lengthy essay, New Yorker writer Casey Cep calls the book "compelling," "sensitive," "careful," "bold," and "relevant" for the times. Writes Cep:

"I think the social scientist in Han was captivated by a church because churches are one of the increasingly rare spaces dedicated to the explicit deliberation of fault and failure—not just other people's but your own—to say nothing of the sincere, indeed the sanctified, call to be better. You can watch physical transformations unfold at the gym or the obstetrician's office, but churches are still theatres for inner transformation, where highs and lows are shouted during worship, and where you can spend years, even decades, witnessing what happens in the lives of other people. Most of these changes do not align with partisan politics or voguish social theories, making them hard to instrumentalize, and their values are no doubt difficult to measure. But they explain why Han found Crossroads to be filled with something that looked like hope."

The New Yorker also added Undivided to its Best Books of 2024.

New York Times Book Review writer Ruth Graham called Undivided "poignant" and states that the book "offers a refreshingly complex portrait of an institution and its members on the rocky path to change." Writes Graham:

"Han has written and co-written previous books about volunteerism in the 2008 Obama campaign and civic participation by underprivileged Americans, among other topics. She is attuned to the subtle and unglamorous work of effecting real change. Her intimacy with her subjects shows in the way she convincingly portrays not just meetings and marches, but quiet family moments and internal wrestling. Yet she also makes clear that individual change is tenuous on its own."

Han also hosted an event in late September at the Hopkins Bloomberg Center in Washington that featured Crossroads pastor Chunk Mingo, parishioner Jess Knight, and Robert P. Jones, president of the Public Religion Research Institute.

Han said that Mingo's leadership is expanding beyond Crossroads to engage with other churches and community organizations, creating the potential for broader societal change.

"The leading edge of social change always begins with people who have a critical eye and a hopeful heart," Han said at the event. "Because that's what you need to be able to think about and move between the world that we have and the world that we want."