A Radical Church’s Collapse Offers Lessons For the Trump Era

Eliza Griswold. Original photo by Seamus Murphy and courtesy DeChant-Hughes Public Relations. Graphic by Candace Sanders/Sojourners.

In 2019, poet and reporter Eliza Griswold began reporting on Circle of Hope, a church founded in the spirit of a radical evangelicalism that motivated the likes of Tony Campolo, Ron Sider, and Jim Wallis. Her new book, Circle of Hope: A Reckoning with Love, Power, and Justice in an American Church documents her experience.

The church, founded in 1996 by the couple Rod and Gwen White, had spread to four locations by 2019. Griswold saw the flourishing, growing community as an intriguing example of evangelicalism untied from the Religious Right.

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