As a
pandemic and racial reckoning exposed society’s faults, Christian thinkers were
laying the groundwork for a better future. A public health and economic crisis provoked
by Covid-19. A social crisis cracked open by the filmed murder of George Floyd.
A leadership crisis laid bare as the gravity of a global pandemic met a country
suffocating in political polarization and idolatry.
In the spring of 2020, Comment magazine created a
publishing project to tap the resources of a Christian humanist tradition to
respond collaboratively and imaginatively to these crises. Plough soon
joined in the venture. So did seventeen other institutions. The web commons
that resulted – Breaking Ground – became a
one-of-a-kind space to probe society’s assumptions, interrogate our own hearts,
and imagine what a better future might require.
This
volume, written in real time during a year that revealed the depths of our
society’s fissures, provides a wealth of reflections and proposals on what
should come after. It is an anthology of different lenses of faith seeking to
understand how best we can serve the broader society and renew our
civilization.
Contributors
include Anne Snyder, Susannah Black, Mark Noll, N. T. Wright, Gracy Olmstead,
Doug Sikkema, Patrick Pierson, Jennifer Frey, J. L. Wall, Michael Wear, Dante
Stewart, Joe Nail, Benya Kraus, Patrick Tomassi, Amy Julia Becker, Jeffrey
Bilbro, Marilynne Robinson, Cherie Harder, Joel Halldorf, Irena Dragas Jansen,
Katherine Boyle, L. M. Sacasas, Jake Meador, Joshua Bombino, Chelsea Langston
Bombino, Aryana Petrosky Roberts, Stuart McAlpine, Heather C. Ohaneson, Oliver
O’Donovan, W. Bradford Littlejohn, Anthony M. Barr, Michael Lamb, Shadi Hamid,
Samuel Kimbriel, Christine Emba, Brandon McGinley, John Clair, Kurt Armstrong,
Peter Wehner, Jonathan Haidt, Dhananjay Jagannathan, Phil Christman, Gregory
Thompson, Duke Kwon, Carlo Lancellotti, Tara Isabella Burton, Charles C.
Camosy, Joseph M. Keegin, Luke Bretherton, Tobias Cremer, and Elayne Allen.
One way to describe this new anthology from the Breaking Ground project is as a “Good Party,” to borrow a phrase from contributor Tara Isabella Burton. A Good Party, she suggests, is “a place where bonds of friendship, fostered in a spirit of both charity and joy, serve as the building blocks for communal life overall.” With 52 contributors filling almost 500 pages, we’re speaking of something close to a block party, one at which we run into some familiar faces, meet a number of wonderful new people, and even glimpse a few Almost Famous People… Since there was no overarching agenda here beyond a call to reflection, it’s truly a bit of a potluck experience. —Front Porch Republic
