Roy and Alan are launching their new book, Forming Communities of Hope in the Great Unraveling (Wipf and Stock, 2025).

When we sent in the manuscript the notion of “communities of hope” wasn’t part of the lingua franca of the churches or society. Over the past year the theme of hope has emerged as one of the more pressing questions we're wanting to talk about. The reasons are not hard to find. We feel this unraveling of all things. As Marx put it: “All that is solid melts into air”. A sense of darkening and foreboding has overcome Western societies. Cascading threats are feeling overwhelming. Creation is groaning and we’re no longer confident that we, or even AI, have the answers.

This all feels strange and disruptive to the generations born since W.W.2. Some who can remember have every right to ask what happened to what the French called the Les Trente Glorieuses - that golden era of economic prosperity and expanding international peace - promised everyone after WW2. Promises that all boats will rise and the ever moving socio/economic escalator will keep moving up have failed. What happened to the “end of history” and its myth of an ascendant liberal West? We confront unstoppable climate change and self-indulgent leaders with no answers. Some turn to a new salvation myth in the promises of AI and techno-utopias. Most of us know hope will not be found here.

Forming Communities of Hope in the Great Unraveling offers a pathway for forming communities of hope.

Roy and I invite you to some transAtlantic “Conversations”.

The conversations are around some key elements of the book such as:

* The longing for hope in a culture of death.

* Modernity’s story - our misplaced hope.

* God the Creator - hope beyond technique.

* The vocation of God’s people in a time of nihilism.

* Attending to hope in the right way - receiving God’s agency.

* Discerning and joining what the Spirit is doing.

Forming Communities of Hope in the Great Unraveling is intended to set a table for listening conversations and spaces of trust where we can wrestle together with how to take this journey of forming such communities where we dwell.