Reading in Community: ICS’s Summer Read, On Tyranny
If you’re like our team at Ministry Forum then summer is a time to slowing oyur pace, catch up on good books, and reconnect with the deeper questions that shape our faith and practice. That’s why we want to highlight an offering from our neighbours at the Institute for Christian Studies (ICS): their 2025 Summer Read, featuring Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century.
This event is part of ICS’s Free to be Faithful series and it invites readers to join historians Kristin Du Mez and Bruce Berglund for a live, online conversation on Thursday, July 10 at 8pm ET - It's free, and the recording will be available afterwards so you can gather with your groups on another date if you can’t make it live. So grab the book, grab a few friends, and make some drinks (the team at ICS has custom recipes for the event here)
Why This Matters for Your Ministry this Summer
In recent years, we’ve found ourselves navigating increasing polarization, uncertainty, and a growing concern for the health of democratic life—not only in the public square but within our congregations.
Snyder’s On Tyranny is a brief but powerful reflection on how the patterns of the past speak into our present. Drawing from the lessons of twentieth-century history, Snyder outlines practical ways citizens—and communities—can resist the erosion of democratic norms and build habits of civic and moral responsibility.
For churches, this is an important conversation. Our faith calls us to be people of justice, memory, and courage. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer reminded us, the role of the church is not just to "bandage the victims under the wheel" but to "put a spoke in the wheel itself." To do this wisely requires clarity, historical awareness, and spiritual grounding.
What we especially appreciate about this Summer Read is its communal vision. Participants are encouraged to gather others for group reflection because change doesn’t happen in isolation - resisting tyranny requires community. So, as Snyder writes “Make new friends and march with them.”
Event Details
Live Webinar: Thursday, July 10, 8:00 PM ET
Speakers: Kristin Du Mez & Bruce Berglund
Register and Learn More Here
The recording will be available afterward on the ICS YouTube channel
Sign up and get all of the details here
Buy The Book
On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A “bracing” (Vox) guide for surviving and resisting America’s turn towards authoritarianism, from “a rising public intellectual unafraid to make bold connections between past and present” (The New York Times)
“Timothy Snyder reasons with unparalleled clarity, throwing the past and future into sharp relief. He has written the rare kind of book that can be read in one sitting but will keep you coming back to help regain your bearings.”—Masha Gessen
The Founding Fathers tried to protect us from the threat they knew, the tyranny that overcame ancient democracy. Today, our political order faces new threats, not unlike the totalitarianism of the twentieth century. We are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism, or communism. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience.
On Tyranny is a call to arms and a guide to resistance, with invaluable ideas for how we can preserve our freedoms in the uncertain years to come. Buy it here