The Ivy is delighted to welcome Hahrie Han for a hometown event celebrating her new book Undivided: The Quest for Racial Solidarity in an American Church, the story of a faith-based program designed to foster antiracism and systemic change.
The book emerged out of the observation that in 2016, even as Ohio helped deliver victory to presidential candidate Donald Trump, Cincinnati voters also passed a ballot initiative for universal preschool. The margin was so large that many who elected Trump must have—paradoxically—also voted for the initiative: how could the same citizens support such philosophically disparate aims? What had convinced residents of this Midwestern, Rust Belt community to raise their own taxes to provide early childhood education focused on the poorest—and mostly Black—communities?
Rev. David Ware, the Rector of Baltimore’s Church of the Redeemer, will join Han in conversation about the transformative possibilities for racial solidarity in a moment of deep divisiveness in America.
Click here to RSVP!
Hahrie Han is the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Professor of Political Science, the inaugural director of the SNF Agora Institute, and the director of the P3 research lab at Johns Hopkins University. An elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, she has published four previous books: Prisms of the People, How Organizations Develop Activists, Groundbreakers, and Moved to Action. Her most recent book was awarded the 2022 Michael Harrington Book Award from the American Political Science Association for “scholarship contributing to the struggle for a better world,” and she was also named a 2022 Social Innovation Thought Leader of the Year by the World Economic Forum’s Schwab Foundation. She has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The New Republic, among other national publications. The daughter of Korean immigrants, she lives in Baltimore, Maryland.
Rev. David Ware is the current Rector of Baltimore’s Church of the Redeemer, where he has been since 2015. Raised in Arkansas, Ware holds a BA in English from Yale (1984), an MLS from St. John’s College (1991) and an MDiv from General Theological Seminary (1995). Ware spent time teaching at Sidwell Friends School during the late 80’s and early 90’s before serving as Head of the Upper School of St. Albans, DC in the early 2000’s. He has worked as an Episcopal priest for 29 years. Prior to moving to Baltimore, he served as rector in Cold Spring Harbor, NY.
Exerpted below is a piece of a letter from Rev. David Ware offering personal insights into his roots and the framework of his work.
I came to consciousness lying under a folding table, woken up by an image of church that still inspires me, more of a verb than a noun. Following Jesus is a way to live, and it seeks justice and builds up people and neighborhoods that are broken and tired. And all that we have is a gift—from parents, from friends, from our own hard work, from God—meant to help and heal the world. What’s waking you up right now […] in Baltimore, in your family or around the world? Get engaged [with your neighbors;] I imagine we will lose a little sleep, but the promise is that in the process we’ll find our lives.
