Johnson is a United Methodist pastor, the author of "Holding Up Your Corner: Talking About Race in Your Community" and program director for the Bridge Alliance, which houses The Fulcrum.
This summer, I'm excited to explore a series of reviews highlighting the most impactful and thought-provoking books on my reading list. These works, ranging from spiritual guidance to social commentary, have the potential to enrich our minds, broaden our viewpoints, and inspire us to take action. First on the list is “ Sustaining While Disrupting: The Challenge of Congregational Innovation ” by F. Douglas Powe and Lovett H. Weems Jr.
This theologically grounded guide offers practical wisdom for faith practitioners striving to balance tradition and innovation, addressing the broader challenge of cultivating institutions that provide stability in chaotic times while propelling us toward a more just future. Whether you're a person of faith, a social entrepreneur, or a concerned citizen, the book's insights are not only inspiring but also deeply relevant to our current societal climate.
Powe and Weems, seasoned church leaders, contend that congregations must learn to sustain their core traditions and mission while also disrupting the status quo to remain vibrant and relevant. It requires a delicate balance between honoring one's heritage and embracing innovation, comforting the afflicted, and afflicting the comfortable.
The authors don't just theorize — they draw extensively from their own experiences, as well as those of other congregations, to illuminate the challenges and opportunities of sustaining while disrupting. They offer practical, actionable strategies for assessing a congregation's readiness for change, building consensus, and implementing innovations in areas like worship, leadership, and community engagement. These strategies are not just theoretical, but have been tested and proven effective in real-world situations.
What sets this book apart is its unique theological depth. Powe and Weems are not your typical management consultants with a faith veneer. They bring a distinct perspective, grounding their approach in a profound understanding of Christian scripture and tradition, particularly the prophetic call to justice and compassion. This theological depth is not just for faith communities, but for all who seek a deeper understanding of the world and their place in it.
This is what makes “Sustaining While Disrupting” not just a book for faith practitioners, but a crucial read for social entrepreneurs, citizen activists and all who care about the health of our democratic republic. In an era marked by deep divisions and rapid change, we urgently need institutions that can both ground us in a sense of history and purpose, and propel us toward a more just and equitable future. The time to act is now, and this book provides the guidance we need.
As we navigate the tensions between our "is-ness" and our "ought-ness," between the realities of our past and the promise of our potential, the church can be a unique source of wisdom and leadership. By sustaining our deepest values and traditions, we can find the courage and resilience to disrupt our society's injustices and inequalities. By embracing innovation and experimentation, we can help build a world more aligned with God's vision of love, justice and peace.
Of course, this journey is full of risks and challenges. Powe and Weems are candid about their obstacles, from resistance to change to the danger of burnout. They remind us that sustaining while disrupting is not a destination but a continuous process that requires discernment, creativity and perseverance.
Ultimately, "Sustaining While Disrupting" is a hopeful and challenging book, just like the church at its best. It invites us to embrace the tension between tradition and innovation, not as a source of paralysis but as a wellspring of renewal and transformation. It reminds us that the church, faithful to its deepest calling, can be a powerful force for good in the world — a source of comfort and disruption, a beacon of hope from our "is-ness" to our "ought-ness."
As someone who has dedicated their life to this work, I am deeply grateful for the wisdom and guidance that Powe and Weems offer. Their book is a gift for faith practitioners and all who care about the future of our congregations, our communities, and our shared democracy. It is a reminder that, even in the most challenging times, the church can sustain grace and disrupt love — a catalyst for the transformation of ourselves and the world around us.
A deep look at how "All in the Family" remains a striking mirror of American politics, class tensions, and cultural manipulation—proving its relevance decades later.
All in This American Family
There are a few shows that have aged as eerily well as All in the Family.
It’s not just that it’s still funny and has the feel not of a sit-com, but of unpretentious, working-class theatre. It’s that, decades later, it remains one of the clearest windows into the American psyche. Archie Bunker’s living room has been, as it were, a small stage on which the country has been working through the same contradictions, anxieties, and unresolved traumas that still shape our politics today. The manipulation of the working class, the pitting of neighbor against neighbor, the scapegoating of the vulnerable, the quiet cruelties baked into everyday life—all of it is still here with us. We like to reassure ourselves that we’ve progressed since the early 1970s, but watching the show now forces an unsettling recognition: The structural forces that shaped Archie’s world have barely budged. The same tactics of distraction and division deployed by elites back then are still deployed now, except more efficiently, more sleekly.
Archie himself is the perfect vessel for this continuity. He is bigoted, blustery, reactive, but he is also wounded, anxious, and constantly misled by forces above and beyond him. Norman Lear created Archie not as a monster to be hated (Lear’s genius was to make Archie lovable despite his loathsome stands), but as a man trapped by the political economy of his era: A union worker who feels his country slipping away, yet cannot see the hands that are actually moving it. His anger leaks sideways, onto immigrants, women, “hippies,” and anyone with less power than he has. The real villains—the wealthy, the connected, the manufacturers of grievance—remain safely and comfortably offscreen. That’s part of the show’s key insight: It reveals how elites thrive by making sure working people turn their frustrations against each other rather than upward.
Edith, often dismissed as naive or scatterbrained, functions as the show’s quiet moral center. Her compassion exposes the emotional void in Archie’s worldview and, in doing so, highlights the costs of the divisions that powerful interests cultivate. Meanwhile, Mike the “Meathead” represents a generation trying to break free from those divisions but often trapped in its own loud self-righteousness. Their clashes are not just family arguments but collisions between competing visions of America’s future. And those visions, tellingly, have yet to resolve themselves.
The political context of the show only sharpens its relevance. Premiering in 1971, All in the Family emerged during the Nixon years, when the “Silent Majority” strategy was weaponizing racial resentment, cultural panic, and working-class anxiety to cement power. Archie was a fictional embodiment of the very demographic Nixon sought to mobilize and manipulate. The show exposed, often bluntly, how economic insecurity was being rerouted into cultural hostility. Watching the show today, it’s impossible to miss how closely that logic mirrors the present, from right-wing media ecosystems to politicians who openly rely on stoking grievances rather than addressing root causes.
What makes the show unsettling today is that its satire feels less like a relic and more like a mirror. The demagogic impulses it spotlighted have simply found new platforms. The working-class anger it dramatized has been harvested by political operatives who, like their 1970s predecessors, depend on division to maintain power. The very cultural debates that fueled Archie’s tirades — about immigration, gender roles, race, and national identity—are still being used as tools to distract from wealth concentration and political manipulation.
If anything, the divisions are sharper now because the mechanisms of manipulation are more sophisticated, for much has been learned by The Machine. The same emotional raw material Lear mined for comedy is now algorithmically optimized for outrage. The same social fractures that played out around Archie’s kitchen table now play out on a scale he couldn’t have imagined. But the underlying dynamics haven’t changed at all.
That is why All in the Family feels so contemporary. The country Lear dissected never healed or meaningfully evolved: It simply changed wardrobe. The tensions, prejudices, and insecurities remain, not because individuals failed to grow but because the economic and political forces that thrive on division have only become more entrenched. Until we confront the political economy that kept Archie and Michael locked in an endless loop of circular bickering, the show will remain painfully relevant for another fifty years.
Ahmed Bouzid is the co-founder of The True Representation Movement.