Circle of Hope
A Reckoning with Love, Power, and Justice in an American Church
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- Pre-Order
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- Expected Aug 6, 2024
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- $14.99
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- Pre-Order
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
A Pulitzer Prize winner’s 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. Many search for more authentic ways to find and follow Jesus.
Circle of Hope tells of one such “radical outpost of Jesus followers” in Philadelphia, 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, Circle grows for forty years, plants four congregations, and then finds itself in crisis.
Immersive, explosive, and tender-hearted, Pulitzer Prize winner Eliza Griswold offers an American allegory full of urgent questions: 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, Griswold chronicles Circle’s journey as its devoted pastors and members strive toward change that might help the church survive. Through generational rifts, an increasingly politicized religious landscape, a pandemic that prevents gathering in 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 a community to love, to grow, and to disagree.
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.