Alumni Q&A: Rev. Kevin Kitrell Ross, MRPL '23
From the Southside of Chicago, the Rev. Kevin Kitrell Ross, affectionately known as “Rev. Kev,” came to Cambridge to receive his Master of Religion and Public Life degree in 2022. He is the Senior Minister of Unity of Sacramento and an interfaith social justice leader. Rev. Kev describes himself:
“I am the passion of Black Lives Matter and the poise of Gandhi’s Namaste. I am my grandmama’s hot water cornbread and my Jewish mother’s unleavened bread. I’m Morehouse and Harvard book smart and Chicago Southside street-smart. I’m a globe-trotting, universal human, and one of the boys from the hood. I am a Black optimist who has seen the worst of humanity, but somehow still believes the best is yet to be. I’m Rev. Kev.”
Rev. Kev shares more about himself and how his experience in the Master of Religion and Public Life graduate program has impacted his work in the service of a just world at peace.
Scarlett Rose Ford: What led you to pursue the MRPL, and what was that experience like?
Kevin Kitrell Ross: When I was a part of the American Leadership Forum, a national network dedicated to building stronger communities by strengthening leaders, a dear friend of mine encouraged me to go to Harvard, saying, “You could quadruple not only your local but national and global impact. You’ve got to do it; not only do you need Harvard, but Harvard needs you.”
This came after having served as the Senior Minister and CEO of Unity of Sacramento Church for 12 years; during that time, the world had changed so much that I felt ill-equipped both to fully address the challenges of the day and to lead others in the face of those challenges. We were on the tail end of the George Floyd reckoning and amid the pandemic. Because I lead a congregation that is as diverse as the United Nations, I felt like I was running out of tools to hold the tension that was brewing.
I took my friend’s encouragement as a sign. The MRPL program is a beautiful, diverse cohort of people from different professional backgrounds. Iron sharpens iron, so a lot of good came out of this cohort. I was able to see how others perceive, interpret, and cultivate just peace. Some of these points of view were ones I would not have considered at all. The ways we debated and engaged as a cohort—and continue to engage—enliven the process of working with our different approaches and interpretations of the frameworks.
SRF: What does work in service of a just world at peace mean to you?
KKR: It is about merging worlds that would never coexist. The Cornel West phrase comes to mind, “Justice is what love looks like in public.” In pursuing a just world at peace, a bridge must be built between our often-divergent worlds. For me, that comes with intentionality around forming relationships outside of my known existence. In these shared spaces we are coming to understand what justice looks like to the other.
I’m now pursuing just peace at Harvard through the creation of a campus ministry, called Just Us, which supports this generation of game changers and peacemakers. It is designed to create safe spaces where leaders who are interested in building peace and pursuing justice can be oriented toward game-changing, whether that be through their disruptions as activists or through the innovative ideas they share through their writing and publishing. I’m also leading a public lecture series at Harvard called Public Courage in the Academy. This comes directly out of my MRPL project, which created a curriculum to train and teach religious actors to move beyond political neutrality by finding meaningful pursuits of just peace through the practice of public courage.
SRF: Why do you believe collaboration across disciplines and vocations is important to cultivating just peace?
KKR: When we come together from across disciplines and professions, we move from being the ones with all the answers to the ones with all the questions. This gives us new ways of thinking and approaching our work, which is tremendously valuable. Even after our one year together, my MRPL cohort is still chipping away at these questions together and learning from each other.
The Rev. Kevin Kitrell Ross, MRPL ’23 is the founder of Just Us: A Unity Justice Campus Ministry for Peacemakers and Gamechangers at Harvard, and the creator and cosponsor of Public Courage and the Academy, a public lecture series at Harvard Divinity School.
by Scarlett Rose Ford, MTS ’25