Radical Prayer
Steve Harvester '74

by Eric Weiler '97

This Thanksgiving, for the first time since he has been at the Church Hill United Methodist Church in Norwell, Massachusetts, Reverend Steve Harvester took a public stand on a controversial issue. Selectmen for the town of Norwell had recently agreed to pay a black female police officer $518,000 to settle her lawsuit of sexual and racial harassment against fellow police officers. Because the lawsuit had been settled with a gag order, no testimony from either side will ever be heard.

"The only side that I hear is the police's side," Harvester says. "I'm sure we would hear a different story from her." Concerned with the prevalence of small-town racism, Harvester wrote the annual Thanksgiving eve sermon with the purpose of asking the citizens of Norwell to examine any kind of personal damage they may have caused, and to seek reconciliation if any harm was done. "Healing can only begin with direct communication and confession," Harvester says, "and then there can be healing, but not until then."

Although this is an unusually public circumstance for Steve Harvester, it represents many of the key beliefs that have shaped his life. It also exemplifies his need and respect for community, something that inspired him to apply to Haverford in 1970. After growing up on Long Island, Harvester looked for "a place where I would matter as an individual." In retrospect, Harvester regrets that he just missed "the good stuff," referring to the Civil Rights movement and the Vietnam War protests that took place before he arrived.

While he majored in History and English, the most influential aspect of the school for Harvester was its Quaker roots. Harvester joined the Society of Friends his senior year at Haverford, a decision that greatly affected his life immediately after graduation. His first job was with the National Park Service in Washington D.C., but his only contacts in the area were his aunt and uncle. However, there was a Quaker meeting near their home. That Quaker meeting, Harvester says, "became my spiritual home, the source of all my friendships, and the deep sense of community that I very much needed at that time."

After a few years in the D.C. area and a brief period working as a community organizer in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, Harvester moved to New England, working with Ralph Nader and the Massachusetts Public Interest Research Group. While this position didn't last long, it did act as the catalyst for what Harvester calls his "moral inventory taking and spiritual re-examination." It was on a retreat at a monastery in Spencer, MA, that Steve met his wife, Judy; he also had a mystical experience, a dream that pushed him in the direction in which he is still headed. "For me," Harvester recalls, "my call to ministry and my call to marriage are inextricably intertwined. It all began then."

He entered the Boston University School of Theology in September and married Judy in October of 1979. After the birth of their first child, Helen, in 1981, Steve and Judy moved to West Brookfield, MA, living there for the next five years. (His second and third children, Hannah and Rachel, were born there in 1983 and 1986.) It was in West Brookfield that Harvester's method of prayer first met with some controversy.

In the fall of 1984, Harvester was part of a small group from various congregations holding a candle-light vigil for peace and nuclear disarmament on a sidewalk in nearby Ware, MA. The group was ordered off the sidewalk by the police, but rather than simply retreating, Harvester and the others saw the opportunity for education, and organized a letter writing campaign to the weekly newspaper. Eventually, television stations and newspapers all over the state were talking about The Bill of Rights and freedom of expression. They finally embarrassed the town into giving them a permit for what they had every right to do. Harvester describes the second candle-light vigil as "one of the great nights of my ministry; instead of the six or seven of us there had been the first time, there were several hundred people," many of whom were making their first public demonstration. "What we were celebrating was not only a victory for The Bill of Rights," he says, "but a victory for non-violent conflict resolution."

After those years in West Brookfield, the Harvester family moved to Rhode Island, staying there for three difficult years. It was here that Steve realized that often the most active and powerful people in his congregations were veterans and widows of World War II. "I found myself constantly doing conflict resolution in ways I hadn't expected," he recalls. He also admits that he had no idea how violent a congregation could be when they feel that "their spiritual leader is preaching something that's against all the values they hold most dear."

While this time in Rhode Island was painful, it did see the birth of his fourth child, Daniel, in 1989. This period also saw the birth of another important part of Harvester's life: his work as a storyteller. Harvester was seriously considering a career change when he took his family to First Night, Providence's New Year's Eve celebration. They saw a performance by a storyteller who told a Native American story about a coyote who changes shape to pursue a goose, but loses his magical shape and becomes the first meteorite. "I was enchanted, and at the same time, I was inspired," Harvester recalls. "I said, `I could do that.'"

He soon began to build an inventory of stories that he wanted to tell, practicing in his colleague's youth groups and in his children's classes at school. By the summer of 1990, Harvester's schedule was full, as he was showcased in a storytellers' caravan that traveled to libraries all over the state. He quickly realized that he could teach others how to tell stories as well. In his workshops he explains that his goal is to be ordinary, but at the same time, inspiring. All of his performances end with these words: "Now I've told you my stories; I've given them to you. Spread them around, pass them around, tell them to somebody new. If you do that, if I do that, the stories will never die. And you and I will be alive in the stories. So you be a storyteller, and I'll be a storyteller too." After seven years, Harvester concludes that storytelling has been "a wonderful side-bar to my life."

It was during that first summer of storytelling that he and his family moved to Norwell. Harvester has now been at the Church Hill United Methodist Church since 1990, the longest he has been anywhere since first leaving home. With this congregation of about 100 people, Harvester feels he has matured: "I don't slam people over the head with `the truth as I see it,' as I may have done fifteen years ago. I think I'm more appreciative of what people of the World War II generation went through. So my beliefs haven't changed, but my ways of expressing them have." A few years ago, during the Persian Gulf crisis, Harvester "made it clear how I stood on the injustice of war, but I did not condemn the individuals. I think there was mutual respect on both sides as we went through that."

While he may have settled down at Church Hill, Harvester will always remain a radical. He feels that the basic injustices in America have only intensified since his time in college, and that the gulf between the people who can go to schools like Haverford and the people who cannot is wider. "I was very angry at Haverford, and after Haverford, and when I allow myself to be, I'm still angry now. I don't believe that a person of any conscience can read a newspaper today and not be angry. The challenge is to make that a positive anger--to not move into either bitterness or despair, but to say `the little bit I can change, I will.' And we'll see how that changes anything else."

Harvester, working in conjunction with the Dean at the Boston University School of Theology, is currently waiting to hear if the Bishop for the New England area will grant his request to head a mission team to start a new church in the Boston area. "When you start a new church you have the opportunity to set the agenda and the style," Harvester says. He is praying that the first worship service will happen around Christmas of this year, and that 500 people will be present. That's a large number for Methodism in New England, but as Harvester says, "there's no reason that in a metropolitan area of over a million people, with 60% of them un-churched, that you can't have 500 people show up to experience something potentially life-changing."