Circle of Hope: A radical mission; a riveting crisis; the future of faith: "extraordinary" - Patrick Radden Keefe

Eliza Griswold's book Circle of Hope is a Pulitzer Prize-winning portrait of one religious community and its struggle to remain together despite their dividing truths. It is a soaring, searing examination of what it means for a community to love, grow, and disagree.

Format: Hardback
Length: 352 pages
Publication date: 06 August 2024
Publisher: Headline Publishing Group

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author Eliza Griswold's extraordinary portrait of one religious community - and what it means for us all - is a lyrical, probing, and deeply reported account. Patrick Radden Keefe, author of Empire of Pain, describes it as "an extraordinary account." David Grann, author of Killers of the Flower Moon and The Wager, calls it "a sharply contemporary book, painfully honest, stubbornly hopeful." Archbishop Rowan Williams, author of Passions of the Soul, praises it as "that rarest of books: an examination of the sacred and spiritual realm captured with humor, humanity, and style." Susan Orlean, author of On Animals, notes that "although most evangelicals have their sights firmly set on salvation in the afterlife, one extraordinary church in Philadelphia is designed to fight for progress and dedicated to social justice in this life." Over forty years, Circle of Hope grew from one family to four congregations battling for equality among the sexes, an end to racial discrimination, and offering hope to believers of all kinds - from outcasts to addicts - in its radical mission to improve the world. Then, rocked by many of the same issues facing society at large, from MeToo to Black Lives Matter, Circle of Hope is forced to confront its own mistakes, plunging the community into existential crisis. Building on years of deep reporting, Griswold paints an intimate portrait of pastors and church members desperate to find a way to remain together despite their dividing truths. Through generational rifts, an increasingly politicized religious landscape, a pandemic, and a rise in foundation-shaking activism, Circle of Hope tells a propulsive, layered story of what we do to stay together.

Weight: 554g
Dimension: 241 x 165 x 32 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781035420261