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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.