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.

As a pandemic and racial reckoning exposed society's faults, Christian thinkers were laying the groundwork for a better future.

About the Author
Anne Snyder is the editor-in-chief of Comment magazine, a publication of Cardus, and the creator and host of Breaking Ground. From 2016 to 2019 she directed The Philanthropy Roundtable's Character Initiative, a program seeking to help foundations and business leaders re-envision the nature and shape of formative institutions needed for social and moral renewal in the United States. Her book The Fabric of Character: A Wise Giver's Guide to Supporting Social and Moral Renewal was published in 2019. Anne is also a New Pluralist field builder, a Trinity Forum Senior Fellow, and a Fellow at the Center for Opportunity Urbanism. She has published widely, and currently lives in Washington, DC Susannah Black received her BA from Amherst College and her MA from Boston University. She is an editor at Plough, Mere Orthodoxy, New Polity, and The Davenant Press and is a co-founder of Solidarity Hall and The Simone Weil Center. Her writing has appeared in First Things, The Distributist Review, Solidarity Hall, Providence, Amherst Magazine, Front Porch Republic, Ethika Politika, The Human Life Review, The American Conservative, Mere Orthodoxy, Fare Forward, Postliberal Thought, and elsewhere. A native Manhattanite, she now lives in Queens.

Reviews

In a time of unprecedented human and planetary crisis, Plough and Comment magazines are showing how Christianity can once again seize the cultural high ground. But as their collaborative Breaking Ground anthology shows, this can only be brought about by not neglecting the low ground, since cultivation is an integral affair. If you despair of the future, the writers represented here offer real prophetic hope." -John Milbank, University of Nottingham

I am going to recommend Breaking Ground to our book club. It offers an excellent opportunity to step back and, with the help of some wise observers, reflect on what we might learn from the memorable year we have just been through. -George M. Marsden, Francis A. McAnaney Professor of History Emeritus, University of Notre Dame

Breaking Ground is a masterful essay collection that wrings meaning out of a pandemic year. Moving from the summer of 2020 to the spring of 2021, these essays trace the changing face of the Covid-19 pandemic, from lockdowns to Black Lives Matter protests to the release of the vaccines. It is a blend of on-the-ground reportage, thoughtful conversations, theological studies, and philosophy; while rooted in a pandemic, it also covers racial justice and politics....As the book progresses, its sense of hope ebbs, leaving behind what Anne Snyder's closing essay calls an "ache"-but also a sense that, from all of this, something new will grow.-Foreword Reviews

I'm impressed with the wide array of people from police officers to theologians who contribute to this collection. But isn't this what is needed in our communities across the land - a coming together of a wide array of people who care about the rents in our social fabric, people who talk and listen and pray and think and imagine what could be? -Bob Trube

Those who care about the common good and who long for fresh insights and daring but doable proposals, will find this book a major resource... Breaking Ground is surely one of the most important and beautiful books of 2022, a book to cherish. -Byron Borger

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

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. - Chelsea Langston Bombino, Religion Unplugged

What if the past two years of racial tension, pandemic lockdown, and political upheaval could be seen not as crises to be survived, but as seeds from which a better future could emerge? ... The voices in "Breaking Ground" are both present and prescient. They reflect a gravitational pull toward reflection, change, and possibly even transformation. It's as if, in writing these essays, these authors are emerging into a new day after a dark night. Squinting for sure, but inexorably moving toward the light. -The Christian Science Monitor

Book Information
ISBN 9781636080420
Author Mark Noll
Format Hardback
Page Count 468
Imprint Plough Publishing House
Publisher Plough Publishing House
Dimensions(mm) 229mm * 152mm * 28mm