Kalamazoo, Michigan, July 8, 2024 — The Fetzer Institute announces the appointment of Steven Harris as vice president, ecosystem transformation, effective July 15. In this new role, he will lead the Institute’s work in select sectors or “ecosystems” to center the sacred and bring spiritual solutions to some of our society’s greatest challenges. Harris will also join the Institute’s leadership team.
“I am thrilled to have Steven taking on this role. His literacy across diverse religious traditions, his experience bridging divides, and his commitment to living out a sacred worldview make him uniquely qualified to contribute powerfully to our mission,” noted Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Jonathan Lever.
Prior to joining the Institute, Harris served as senior director of academic programs at Georgetown University’s Center on Faith and Justice. He also served on the faith engagement working group for President Biden’s 2020 campaign and, as director of advocacy and policy director for the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) of the Southern Baptist Convention, he played a significant role in building bipartisan coalitions for passage of the criminal justice reform legislation that President Trump signed into law in 2018. During that time, he also testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee and spent time overseas investigating human rights violations. In advance of these experiences, Harris served in pastoral ministry in Lexington, KY and helped lead congregation-based community organizing efforts across the city. For the past four years, Harris has been a teaching fellow and lecturer at Harvard University, where he has taught a range of religion classes including: “Religion, Race, and the Rise of New Orleans Jazz” and “Religious Literacy and the Professions: Government and Humanitarian Leadership.” A Vanderbilt graduate, he received his MDiv from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, an MA in Religion from Yale, and an MA in Religion from Harvard, where he is also a PhD Candidate in American Religious History.
Of his new assignment, Harris commented, “The explicit intention to attend to the inner, spiritual life as the site from which the public life emerges, most excites me about Fetzer. In this new role, I have the signal opportunity to commend a transcendent vision for both service in the world and the practice of world-building — a sacred-centered worldview desperately needed for such a time as this.”