Undivided: The Quest for Racial Solidarity in an American Church

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.)