From Pandemic to Renewal, Chris Rice. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2023.

Summary: Addresses eight global crises exposed by the COVID pandemic and how Christians may be agents of healing and transformation.

We’ve been through a crisis unlike what most of us have ever faced. Not just some of us in some places. But all of us. In every place. It’s one that has left its marks in our bodies, in our families and social networks, in our politics. Even where the marks are not visible, there are scars on our psyches. That’s what a deadly global pandemic does. And it exposed other crises in our world–political polarization, inequities, corruption, international tensions and a crisis of truth. For many, it exposed a poverty of spiritual resources, evident as much as anything in what seems our frantic effort just to move on and put the pandemic behind us. But the marks remain, and the crises the pandemic exposed remain. Christians are a people who don’t believe in moving on, but in renewal and transformation, often out of suffering, deep pain, and crisis. That’s because we believe in a God who has entered the world’s suffering, pain, and death in his Son, and who brought life, renewal, and transformation out of the darkest hour. But the question is, how does this bear on our experience of the last years and the crises we continue to face?

Chris Rice has lived a life at the intersection of the world’s pain and the gospel’s renewing power, from interracial community development efforts in Mississippi, to the halls of academia, to international relief efforts, and to pleading the cause of the world’s poor at the United Nations. Then the pandemic isolated him for a time in New England with his father and gave him to think about the challenges and opportunities of renewal in a post-pandemic world. In this book he identifies eight crises exposed more clearly during the pandemic and transformative Christian practices to address these crises. His eight chapters dealing with these are:

1. Bearing Joy for a World of Frantic Anxiety. In a world of rising anxiety expressed in a focus on activity, excessive positivism and activism turned to violence, Rice proposes the virtue of joy born out of a life of contemplating being the beloved of God.

2. Centering the Vulnerable for a World of Rising Disparity. The pandemic, thought to be the great equalizer, exposed inequities in death rates, high stock values and long food lines, and great inequalities in the distribution of vaccines. The way of the gospel is the way of the Samaritan on the Jericho road, taking costly steps to focus on the world’s vulnerable.

3. Being Peacemakers for a World of Surging Polarization. Rice recounts some of the unhealed wrongs he has encountered among those with whom he works and the power of the word “we” as we think of who “our” people are. He speaks of the Antioch moment where the gospel crosses boundaries of hostility, of the church’s peacemaking mission as we pursue restorative justice and hold truth and love together in these efforts.

4. Redeeming Power for a World of Political Mediocrity. Rice assesses both the potential for great good and great evil in the exercise of political power. He considers our contemporary polarization, paralysis, and pessimism, and the value of political love in action for the sake of the vulnerable, practiced in prayer, pursuing “purple” spaces, and local opportunities to pursue the common good.

5. Making Transnational Disciples for a World of American Blinders. Rice talks about the American blinders of both how we may believe ourselves saviors of the world and our lack of perception of how American power is perceived elsewhere in the world. He invites us to grow as transnational disciples through expanding what we read, through empowering majority world leaders, and pursuing international friendships.

6. Pursuing Private Integrity for a World of Public Validation. For many of us, what we do, what we have, and what others think of us is the focus of our lives. Rice calls Christians to private integrity, who we are out of public view, through personal examination, vulnerability with others, and communal safeguarding.

7. Cultivating Moral Imagination for a World of Unprecedented Dangers. Amid the dangers of technological disruption, environmental degradation, and the bi-polar China-US conflict, he bids us to imagine a moral world yet to be through forsaking our reliance on technological solutions and our lust for dominion, through instilling hope, through “thinking little,” through practicing non-violent communication, and making climate change personal. He also advises that more Americans might spend time learning Chinese! I thought this perhaps the most prescient chapter in the book.

8. Renewing the Church for a World Longing for Hope. The pandemic, in Rice’s view, has been a time of pruning for the church, a prelude to its renewal. He believes renewal consists in knowing our destination, reforming Christian formation, going deep into congregational life, creating new wineskins for mission, learning to function as ambassadors in the public square, and rooting our lives in intimacy with Christ.

What is striking as I look over this list is that it is about the formation and renewal of Christian character. Joy. Vulnerability. Peacemaking. Political love. Discipleship. Integrity. Moral Imagination. All of this is woven in the context of ecclesial communities. Rice makes a compelling case that this renewal of Christian character has far-reaching consequences, extending to the anxious, the poor, those at enmity, to our politics, to the nations, to our social lives, and to the existential dangers of our time–whether technological, environmental, or nuclear apocalypses.

Chris Rice opens a conversation we desperately need to have. There is no getting back to life before the pandemic. We live in a different, and in many ways, scarier world. How then will the people of God live? Will we bring spiritual understanding to what we have been through, and to how we might live amid the dangers and challenges and opportunities of our new situation? Will we stop fighting old battles and resist the temptation to simply return to our old patterns? This book, including the discussion guide provided for groups, can be an instrument for Christian communities to take stock and discern what it can mean to hope for renewal out of the ruins of these last years.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.