Circle of Hope by Eliza Griswold (reviewed by Gordon Houser in January) is reviewed in the Jan. 16 issue of the New York Review of Books. The article features a large reproduction from the Martyrs Mirror and a lengthy discussion of Anabaptist history. [The book is about a Brethren in Christ congregation, Circle of Hope, in Philadelphia.] The reviewer, Caroline Fraser, presents a secular perspective and concludes with this judgment: “The question that remains at the end of this meticulously reported, sensitively written and often frustrating book concerns the meaning of ‘progressive’ within an evangelical Christian church. Can so-called Bible-based Christianity . . . ever really be reformed? Judging by Circle of Hope, the answer is no.”
Ross Lynn Bender, Philadelphia
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