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Faith-Rooted Organizing on New Terrain


Pre-Festival Offering
Thursday August 28, 2025

9 am – 5 pm

cost: $59.00

Facilitated by Lisa Sharon Harper
 
Faith-Rooted Organizing draws from the roots of our traditions to help faith communities engage the larger movement for justice in our world. In this workshop, Lisa Sharon Harper will equip participants to analyze their community, strategize, build collaborative networks, and take action inspired by their faith! As the U.S. moves through the next presidential administration, there are a lot of reasons to throw up our hands and give up. But we cannot. Now is not the time for hopelessness. Now is the time for faith. Faith in God. Faith in the Jesus ethic. Faith in our power to actually be the body of Christ in our neighborhoods and cities and nation. We need thick faith right now. But it is not enough for us to learn from those who have gone before us in the U.S. We are entering new terrain. For that we must also turn to our brothers and sisters whose faith-soaked actions won their fights against authoritarian governments. It’s time to get ready.
 

FACILITATOR

Lisa Sharon Harper

 

 

From Ferguson to New York, and from Germany to South Africa to Australia, Lisa Sharon Harper leads trainings that increase clergy and community leaders’ capacity to organize people of faith toward a just world. A prolific speaker, writer and activist, Ms. Harper is the founder and president of FreedomRoad.us, a consulting group dedicated to shrinking the narrative gap in our nation by designing forums and experiences that bring common understanding, common commitment and common action.

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.

A columnist at Sojourners Magazine and an Auburn Theological Seminary Senior Fellow, Ms. Harper has appeared on TVOne, FoxNews Online, NPR, and Al Jazeera America. Her writing has been featured in CNN Belief Blog, The National Civic Review, Sojourners, The Huffington Post, Relevant Magazine, and Essence Magazine. She writes extensively on shalom and governance, immigration reform, health care reform, poverty, racial and gender justice, climate change, and transformational civic engagement.

Ms. Harper earned her Masters degree in Human Rights from Columbia University in New York City, and 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 she educated faith leaders in South Africa to pull the levers of their new democracy toward racial equity and economic inclusion.

In 2015, The Huffington Post named Ms. Harper one of 50 powerful women religious leaders to celebrate on International Women’s Day. In 2019, The Religion Communicators Council named a two-part series within Ms. Harper’s monthly Freedom Road Podcast “Best Radio or Podcast Series of The Year”. The series focused on The Roots and Fruits of Immigrant Labor Exploitation in the US. And in 2020 Ms. Harper received The Bridge Award from The Selma Center for Nonviolence, Truth and Reconciliation in recognition of her dedication to bridging divides and building the beloved community.

Lisa is host of the Freedom Road Podcast, cohost of The FOUR Podcast and author of her weekly column on Substack, “The Truth Is…”. Her much anticipated book, Fortune: How Race Broke My Family And The World–And How To Repair It All, is now available!

Check In for pre-festival events will be available on Wednesday from 1 pm to 5 pm, and Thursday from 7am to 9 am.
If you’re tent camping, there’s no additional campsite charge for Wednesday night.
Some campsite locations are restricted due to large venue tent construction in several areas.
RV campers will need to purchase an additional night.

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