Eliza Griswold's Circle of Hope

My Review for Englewood Review of Books

Late last month I had breakfast with Chris Smith of Englewood Review of Books. He asked if I had read Eliza Griswold’s Circle of Hope: A Reckoning with Love, Power, and Justice in an American Church. I said that I had heard great things about it but hadn’t read it yet. He said he’s send me a copy if I would write a review for ERB.

I finished the book over the weekend. Then I took a couple of days to reflect on what I had read before writing the review. It went live today and I am providing it below.

A good journalistic treatment of events provides a deep dive into the specific story being told. A great treatment manages to tell the micro-level story while remaining aware of the macro-level factors affecting it. Eliza Griswold’s Circle of Hope is a great example of the latter.

The book’s title comes from the name of the congregation featured in the book, which was founded by Ron and Gwen White in the late 1990s. Affiliated with the Brethren in Christ denomination, Circle of Hope had three meeting sites in Philadelphia and one across the river in southern New Jersey. As the Whites were moving away from central leadership, Griswold tells the story of the congregation through the experiences of the pastors of all four locations.

Griswold embedded with the congregation from 2019 to 2023, a remarkably turbulent time. In addition to the important story of a leadership transition of the church’s beloved founders, the outside world also forced its way into Circle of Hope: in the form of a worldwide COVID pandemic, George Floyd’s killing, the subsequent protests, a contentious presidential election and an insurrection. In the meantime, Circle of Hope was trying to live more fully into its ideals, which brought concerns about racism and LGBTQ affirmation to the fore.

As a sociologist of religion, I was fascinated with how the macro-story set the context for Circle of Hope. The Whites were products of the Jesus People movement in California. Committed to living in community, they were drawn to the Anabaptist tradition and affiliated with the Brethren in Christ. Ron White attended Fuller Seminary and became a proponent of the Church Growth movement. The Whites were also aware of the affinities between evangelicals and the religious right and were determined to do something different. Griswold describes that vision:

Yet Circle was undeniably modern. Rod dubbed this the Friends model of church planting: sharing your life in Jesus with a group of strangers, and they become your family. At Circle, young people knit their lives together – supporting one another’s businesses, forming loose collectives to babysit one another’s kids, moving into shared homes – all out of a common commitment to love Jesus in every aspect of their lives. (27)

Circle of Hope depended on cell groups as a means of community. Wanting to avoid official structures, Rod White argued that they were to be “the Amoeba of Christ.” Two mechanisms would keep the community centered: Circles of Concern, focused on broad social issues, and a set of “proverbs” that stated core commitments. Over time, the latter grew in number (and kept reminding me of George Orwell’s Animal Farm!).

All of this is the backdrop to the micro-story that forms the book’s narrative arc. With the Whites now in the role of development pastors (and then out of official roles altogether), the four continuing pastors – Ben (one of the White’s sons), Julie, Rachel, and Jonny – tell the story. Griswold had access to their email communications and hours of Zoom conversations (necessary during COVID).

In addition to the somewhat normal challenges of leadership transitions, multi-site operations, and a global pandemic, Circle challenged itself to address its own internal issues related to their longstanding commitments to justice and equity. In the aftermath of the Floyd protests, there was a call for Circle to become anti-racist. They learned from a consultant that they couldn’t learn anti-racism until they were prepared to address the sense of white privilege that existed in the community. Yet trying to give prominence to voices of color – including Jonny, of Egyptian descent – often meant calling out others (every time “The Whites” were mentioned in this section of the book, I had to remind myself that it was referring to the church’s founders!).

Conversations about race are challenging in the healthiest of congregations. To do so during a pandemic and its aftermath when gathering is difficult made things much worse. On top of that, the differences between the four pastors became problematic. As Jonny increasingly took the lead and blamed the Whites for past problems, Ben White became defensive and anxious. The two women pastors were often minimized in a mostly benign misogyny.

When Jonny came out as bisexual and encouraged Circle to announce itself as affirming, it created new challenges. It was hard for Circle members to see this development as a collaborative conversation within The Amoeba. More significantly, the Brethren in Christ is not an affirming denomination so that becoming affirming would mean losing financial resources and two of the church’s main buildings. Circle of Hope went forward anyway.

By the end of the book, there were still two thrift stores that served the community, but the congregation had effectively ceased operation. The pastors had either gone elsewhere or left ministry altogether.

I’m sure there are reviews of Eliza Griswold’s book that think the takeaway message is “See, that’s what happens when churches go woke!” or “That’s what happens when you make church about race and LGBTQ issues!” But that’s not the story of Circle of Hope.

Circle’s commitments to being a true community that is attuned to justice issues made it an ideal candidate for tackling challenging topics. For too many churches the ideal seems to be entertainment and inspiration within the context of relative anonymity. To really be a community involves risk and difficult conversations.

It also takes time. Lots of time. And patience and forbearance. Tackling these topics in the midst of a leadership transition or a global pandemic is a recipe for failure. Taking a pivotal and timely issue like the George Floyd protests and trying to force a conversation about anti-racism is challenging at best. Once the immediate moment passes, generating the necessary energy is difficult.

Some of the leaders pushed too hard, too fast, and didn’t care who got hurt in their pursuit of justice. I’m reminded of Bonhoeffer’s warnings in Life Together. When we try to create community in our own strength, we don’t do it well. Community, he tells us, is a gift from God.

Circle of Hope is an excellent and compelling book that deserves all the praise it’s been receiving. Reading it, one can viscerally sense things coming apart for the congregation.

But one can also look more deeply into the story. There are many points along the way where a fresh path forward to deal with issues of race were evident, what we could call “roads not taken.” Maybe a heightened sense of trust among the leaders that wasn’t worked out over countless Zoom meetings might have set the stage for fruitful dialogue. Even though the congregation doesn’t survive as planned, hope yet remains.