BIO
Steven Harris is a faith-based public policy expert and scholar of American religious history and African American studies. He currently serves as Senior Director of Academic Programs at the Center on Faith and Justice at Georgetown University. Prior to arriving at Georgetown, Steven spent several years on Capitol Hill building coalitions and working on domestic and international public policy issues at the intersection of religion, justice, and human dignity. In 2018, he testified before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs in a hearing entitled, "Protecting Civil Society, Faith-Based Actors, and Political Speech in Sub-Saharan Africa." His testimony focused on the human rights and national security interests related to constricting civil society spaces in Sudan, Rwanda, and the DRC. In 2019, he spent time in South Korea interviewing North Korean defectors on DPRK human rights violations, and produced a brief documentary film of those interviews entitled, Humanity Denied, which was premiered at a public event on Capitol Hill. Recognizing a lack of concern and investment in criminal justice and racial healing in southern states, he helped procure a Chan Zuckerberg Initiative grant to expand faith-based engagement and education on those issues. Steven volunteered with the Joe Biden presidential campaign and Faith 2020, helping develop faith outreach strategies while also planning and participating in virtual campaign events.
In the world of academia, his research interests lie at the historical intersection of black religious thought and Calvinistic theology. His book chapter, "Religion and the Republic: An Eighteenth-Century Black Calvinist Perspective" was published by Oxford University Press in 2021, in a volume edited by Bruce Gordon and Carl R. Trueman entitled, The Oxford Handbook of Calvin and Calvinism. He is currently considering the theo-logics of historical black religious actors in conversation with the contemporary discursive edges of critical race theory and Afro-pessimist thought. His most recent commentary and writing has interrogated the intersection of religion, race, and politics in the contemporary U.S.
A Vanderbilt graduate, Steven received an MDiv from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, an MA in Religion from Yale Divinity School, an MA in Religion from Harvard University, and is currently a PhD candidate at Harvard.