Circle of Hope

A Reckoning with Love, Power, and Justice in an American Church

De: Eliza Griswold

Narrado por: Jennifer Pickens

Long-listed, Minneapolis Star Tribune Holiday Book Recommendations, 2024

Long-listed, Publishers Weekly Best Books of the Year, 2024

National Book Awards, Finalist, 2024

New York Times Book Review Notable Books of the Year, 2024

Long-listed, Washington Post Best Books of the Year, 2024

Long-listed, NPR Best Book of the Year, 2024

Long-listed, Boston Globe Best Books of the Year, 2024

A Pulitzer Prize winner’s intimate portrait of a church, its radical mission, and its riveting crisis.

"Jennifer Pickens adopts an even-keeled reportorial cadence and timbre well suited to Griswold's immersion journalism, which recounts the rise and fall of Circle of Hope."—AudioFile

“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.

A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

©2024 Eliza Griswold (P)2024 Macmillan Audio

Reseñas de la Crítica

“Riveting . . . A fascinating inquest into the death of a church that doubles as a compassionate case study on the insufficiency of good intentions.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Eliza Griswold is a dazzling reporter: ever observant, wise, sympathetic, and honest. And in this spellbinding book, she not only immerses herself in a radical religious community but also reveals its fracturing in real time, raising questions about the nature of faith and justice and what binds us as Americans.”—David Grann, author of The Wager

“Circle of Hope is an act of courage, vulnerability, and creativity—all things that make Eliza Griswold’s seasoned voice once again strike with strength.”—Danté Stewart, author of Shoutin’ in the Fire

Nothing goes as planned

The author started out what she thought was to detail a church that thought it was extraordinary but turned out to be ordinary. A person can be humble materialistically but if you can’t humble yourself in all aspects of your life it’s hard to lead a church. The hard part is the journey inward. I wish nothing but the best for Rachel Julie Ben and Jonny. Although you do leave the book with favorites.

A not so perfect view

Amazing balanced capture of the strengths and wrestles of pastors and a Christian community attempting to be present and viable in an ever shifting American culture.

Empathy and hope despite tragedies, loss, fanaticism

Suspenseful, lucid, caring story of Circle of Hope's loving actions for the homeless, addicted, harmed, confused, selfish, destructive, and lost in the midst of the Christians' own failures, sins, getting caught in false ideologies that tore the beloved community apart.

Insightful full account of a painful time

A detailed and full access account to many sides of a conflicted time as a church community wrestles with pandemic and their own flawed systems and characters.

Worthy read for faith seekers, church-minded, etc.

I’m a non-theistic humanist, but I was raised in a religious and contemplative family, very active in social justice. COH reminds me of a community I belonged to as a teenager, which imploded in similar fashion. Like others, I found this book harrowing but engrossing. I have not much to add upon other reviews except this: Rod, along with his faults, turned out to have prescient wisdom about a few things. His absence for a year or two might have made things a bit less tangled, but it seemed to me—in the end—the younger pastors who shunned him made their own misery by not heeding his advice and by straying far afield from too many of the church practices he had helped develop over 3 decades of experience. However, in the end, it seemed to turn out for the best. I do hope Rachel returned to pastoring. Of the four, she seemed uniquely gifted for it,

Very boring story, no revelations

I can't believe Griswold wrote an entire book documenting church drama. I kept waiting for some sort of revelation or insight, but it never came.

Honest and Compelling

This book tells the story of Circle of Hope—a collection of urban congregations, cell groups, Thrift stores, and other social ministries in the Philadelphia area. While the author gives a brief history of Circle, the book mainly focusses on how Circle’s pastors and other leaders wrestled with issues and interpersonal tensions growing out of the 2020 Covid shutdown and the emerging racial and cultural unrest from that time. The author gives a raw and honest look at how this group of deeply committed followers of Christ struggled personally and as a larger body around such issues as racism, economic disparities, and LGBT inclusion.
I found the book compelling, partly because of how the author chose to structure the narrative. The book is really a series of continually alternating chapters, each devoted to the experiences and perspectives of four individuals--Julie, Jonny, Rachel, and Ben--who served as Circle of Hope pastors during the period of time, from 2020 onward, the author chose to explore in the Circle of Hope story. The care the author put into telling each pastor’s and a few other people’s pivotal life experiences and faith journeys made me feel deeply connected to these individuals. Even when I found myself questioning some of their actions or motives, I felt like I could understand where they were coming from. I also connected on a personal level to many of their experiences in Anabaptist and Evangelical churches. The book gives a window into various church movements, beginning with the Jesus movement of the 60’s (where Circle of Hope’s founders got their start) through various phases and struggles of Christian Evangelical movements up through the present. I loved how the author brought to the forefront many things I have witnessed or been part of first-hand, myself (youth movements, missions emphases, the emergence of mega churches, the rise and fall of Mars Hill, church activism, and struggles with cultural and political engagement) that don’t often get attention from journalists in the larger culture in such a thoughtful, sustained way.
As much as I appreciated the deeply personal narrative structure, this was also the book’s biggest downfall. By spending so much time going back and forth between at least four people’s experiences and perspectives, I felt like the book lost its way. It just kept boring in on the same events, conflicts, and attempts at conversation and mutual understanding from so many points of view that I had trouble keeping track of what actually happened or what some of the conflicts were even about. As much as I appreciated the candor and personalized approach, I found the back and forth rehashing of the same events confusing, repetitive, unhinged from a coherent timeline of events, and just plain tedious. I also felt like so much of what Circle of Hope was actually doing in the communities it served and in people’s lives got lost and overshadowed. It even felt a little jarring and out of place when the author suddenly introduced the story of a church member struggling with drug addiction and the efforts of church leaders and members to meet his needs. This is unfortunate because I feel like I missed out on truly important aspects of Circle of Hope in the interest of the author telling and retelling internal conflicts to the extent that the central “story” –what was actually going on in real time--lost any linearity and became incoherent.
Despite these flaws, I really liked this book because it felt serious, honest, compassionate, and it had heart. I will not forget these individuals or their stories or Circle of Hope. I almost feel like I’ve had the chance to sit and have coffee with each of them and to be “in the room” at Circle, so to speak. I think that’s what the author was going for as a self-proclaimed embedded journalist. In that sense, the book is a triumph, though a bit convoluted.