Circle of Hope
A Reckoning with Love, Power, and Justice in an American Church
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4.3 • 6 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
A National Book Award Finalist
Named a Best Book of the Year by The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, NPR, The Minnesota Star Tribune, and Publishers Weekly
“Glows on every page . . . nearly miraculous.” —The Boston Globe
“Marvelous.” —The New York Times
From the Pulitzer Prize winner Eliza Griswold, Circle of Hope is an intimate portrait of a church, its radical mission, and its riveting crisis.
“The revolution I wanted to be part of was in the church.”
Americans have been leaving their churches. Some drift away. Some stay home. And some have been searching for—and finding—more authentic ways to find and follow Jesus.
This is the story of one such “radical outpost of Jesus followers” dedicated to service, the Sermon on the Mount, and working toward justice for all in this life, not just salvation for some in the next. Part of a little-known yet influential movement at the edge of American evangelicalism, Philadelphia’s Circle of Hope grew for forty years, planted four congregations, and then found itself in crisis.
The story that follows is an American allegory full of questions with urgent relevance for so many of us, not just the faithful: How do we commit to one another and our better selves in a fracturing world? Where does power live? Can it be shared? How do we make “the least of these” welcome?
Building on years of deep reporting, the Pulitzer Prize winner Eliza Griswold has crafted an intimate, immersive, tenderhearted portrait of a community, as well as a riveting chronicle of its transformation, bearing witness to the ways a deeply committed membership and their team of devoted pastors are striving toward change that might help their church survive. Through generational rifts, an increasingly politicized religious landscape, a pandemic that prevented gathering to worship, and a rise in foundation-shaking activism, Circle of Hope tells a propulsive, layered story of what we do to stay true to our beliefs. It is a soaring, searing examination of what it means for us to love, to grow, and to disagree.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
The massive social issues of 2020 turned a simple look at a historic Philadelphia church into this brilliant portrait of an institution in turmoil. Initially intending to write about the topic of liberal evangelicals, Eliza Griswold embedded herself with Circle of Hope, an Anabaptist congregation founded in the 1990s by sometime “Jesus freaks” Rod and Gwen White. But a global pandemic, George Floyd’s murder, and a push for LGBTQ affirmation force the church’s four pastors to reexamine everything. Subsequently, Griswold witnesses the church’s leadership fracture beyond repair. Here, the road to hell truly is paved with good intentions, as everyone wants to do the right thing but no one agrees what that means. The daughter of the former leader of the Episcopal Church, Griswold has a true insider’s perspective, and her writing underlines her frustration at watching good people succumb to infighting. Circle of Hope demonstrates what can happen when convictions outweigh compassion.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Pulitzer winner Griswold (Amity and Prosperity) delivers a riveting chronicle of the fracturing of a progressive Christian church during a period of social and political turmoil. In 1996, "hippie church planters" Rod and Gwen White founded the Circle of Hope church in Philadelphia as an alternative to "hypocrisy, GOP politics, and rote Bible learning." By the 2010s, they'd expanded into four congregations in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. But fissures that developed after the Whites stepped back from day-to-day operations in the 2010s deepened in 2020 as the church's four pastors grappled with Covid lockdown policies; the disconnect between the church's antiracism efforts and its struggles to interrogate its own biases; and questions over whether social justice efforts should be linked to political activism. Focusing on each of the four pastors in turn, Griswold artfully teases out the challenges that eventually led to the church's closure at the end of 2023, including the gap between its utopian vision and its ability to enact it and growing tensions with the Whites, who wanted to keep the institution largely out of politics. It's a fascinating inquest into the death of a church that doubles as a compassionate case study on the insufficiency of good intentions.
