Justice + Peace in a Divided World with Lisa Sharon Harper
With a strong focus on racial justice, Lisa leads trainings and mobilizes leaders around shared values. Prior to her current work as Executive Director of Freedom Road, Lisa was Chief Engagement Officer at Sojourners and the founding executive director of New York Faith & Justice—an organization working to end poverty in New York City. Lisa’s faith-rooted approach has activated people across the U.S. and around the world. During this event, Ms. Harper highlighted our calling to participate in the bringing of Shalom.
Speaker
Lisa Sharon Harper
From New York to Germany and South Africa, Ms. Harper leads trainings and helps mobilize clergy and community leaders around shared values for the common good, with a focus on racial justice. A prolific speaker, writer, and activist, Ms. Harper is the founder and president of Freedom Road LLC, a consulting group dedicated to shrinking the narrative gap in our nation by convening forums and experiences that bring common understanding, common commitment, and common action toward a just world. Ms. Harper is the author of several books, including: Evangelical Does Not Equal Republican…or Democrat (The New Press, 2008), Left Right and Christ: Evangelical Faith in Politics (Elevate, 2011), Forgive Us: Confessions of a Compromised Faith (Zondervan, 2014), and the critically acclaimed, The Very Good Gospel: How Everything Wrong can be Made Right (Waterbrook, a division of Penguin Random House, 2016). The Very Good Gospel, recognized as the “2016 Book of the Year” by Englewood Review of Books, explores God’s intent for the wholeness of all relationships in light of today’s headlines.
Having earned her Master’s degree in Human Rights from Columbia University in New York City, Ms. Harper served as Sojourners Chief Church Engagement Officer. In this capacity, she fasted for 22 days as a core faster in 2013 with the immigration reform Fast for Families. She trained and catalyzed evangelicals in St. Louis and Baltimore to engage the 2014 push for justice in Ferguson and the 2015 healing process in Baltimore and trained faith leaders in South Africa to pull the levers of their new democracy toward a more just world.
In 2015 The Huffington Post recognized her as one of “50 Powerful Women Religious Leaders to Celebrate on International Women’s Day”. Most recently, Relevant Magazine recognized The Very Good Gospel as one of “Six Books that Will Change the Way You See the World” and Ms. Harper as one of “Seven Leaders to Follow in 2017″.