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.

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.

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.