Undivided

The story of an Evangelical church in Cincinnati and its mission to bridge the divide of racial tension in its own community and across the nation. Crossroads is an Evangelical megachurch in Cincinnati with a large and devoted congregation, where many members have participated in a remarkable experiment: Undivided, a six-week program developed by the church, designed to initiate and promote meaningful relationships across race, and to foster a desire for justice. The designers of Undivided knew that the ingrained racial injustice pervading America emerged from more than the sum of individual prejudices. Change, therefore, would have to be radical—from the very roots—tracing both individual prejudices and the structures that perpetuate them. Hahrie Han, a political science professor at Johns Hopkins University, was eager to understand its mission and goals and was given complete and open access. In Undivided, she details the program’s development, its participants’ efforts to navigate the complexities of race and faith during the Trump era, and its effects. Han also addresses the history of the evangelical movement, including its ties to white supremacy and exclusion. Han’s narrative weaves together the accounts of four congregants—two men, one Black and one white; two women, one Black and one white—who participated in Undivided and dedicated themselves to carrying forward the work of constructing racial solidarity. Their journeys were courageous, eye-opening, at times painful, always complex and uncertain—and unfinished. None of them came away unchanged.