Eliza Griswold Author of Circle of Hope
September 19 @ 6:00 pm - 7:00 pm
Free
The author is joined by Princeton University faculty member Judith Weisenfeld to discuss her recently released book “Circle of Hope: A Reckoning with Love, Power, and Justice in an American Church.”
About the Book (from the publisher):
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.
About the Author: Eliza Griswold is the author of six books of poetry and nonfiction, all published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Her book “Amity and Prosperity: One Family and the Fracturing of America” was awarded the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction and is is on the top 10 list for the National Book Award. She writes for The New Yorker, is the Ferris Professor and Director of the Program in Journalism at Princeton University.
About the Moderator: Judith Weisenfeld is the Agate Brown and George L. Collord Professor of Religion and associated faculty in the Department of African American Studies and the Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies. She also serves on the Executive Committee of the Program in American Studies. Weisenfeld’s research focuses on early twentieth-century African American religious history, focusing on a range of topics, including the relation of religion to constructions of race, the impact on black religious life of migration, immigration, and urbanization, African American women’s religious history, religion in film and popular culture, and religion and medicine.