Exercising Power Can Look Like Weakness

Last year, we launched Salt and Light Stories, a graphic novel with mini-series that tell the stories of modern day “saints” who demonstrate to us what it looks like to pursue the common good. With the hope of reaching Generation Z and Alpha, we chose comic-style storytelling, a medium that has become increasingly popular.  

In our series on the Beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount, we begin to see how serving others and pursuing the common good is a Biblical application of power. 

Since we first launched Salt and Light Stories, we have released five completed mini-series, telling the stories of a wide variety of people. Our first mini-comic was an adaptation of rock and roll artist Larry Norman’s essay, “The Story of Solid Rock,” inspired by his best selling album In Another Land. You can read the full comic, Why Should the Devil Have All the Good Music, here. 

Following Norman, we began telling the story of our namesake, the Clapham Sect, a group of social reformers in late 18th-century England. William Wilberforce and Hannah More used their political and cultural influence to bring about social reforms including abolishing the slave trade. Part 1 of this comic series, How Fierce Convictions Led to Amazing Grace, is fully completed and can be read here. 

We completed Part 2 of the retelling of our namesake, the Clapham Sect this year.  In this installment, we emphasized the two issues that More and Wilberforce worked on together diligently for many years, known as Wilberforce's Two Great Objects. 

We had the privilege of working with award winning author, Kevin Belmonte, to share this story and reflect on his latest biography, The Sacred Flame: A Biography of Hannah More. If you’re interested in learning about the history of the Clapham Sect, and how it influences how we work today, we invite you to read the fully completed version here. 

Third, we told the biblical story of Daniel, a Jewish captive taken by the Babylonian empire in around 600 BCE. The story of Daniel offers a powerful example of how to live in the culture and seek the welfare of your city, without making it your permanent home. You can read the full version of this mini series, Believing in Babylon, here. 

At the end of 2024, we released our fourth comic, Guinness: Brewing Good, which shares the story of Arthur Guinness’s life amidst his founding of his brewing company. Through generosity  and compassion, Guinness utilized his success to benefit his local community, and as the brewery grew, pioneer humane worker standards. You can read the full comic here, and find the highlights of the interview between Mark Rodgers and Arthur’s great-great grandson, Os Guinness, here. 

We’re excited to announce our newest comic, “Blessed Are,” which seeks to bring the Beatitudes from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount to life in a modern day context relevant to Generations Z and Alpha. As the name of our series suggests, we seek to tell the stories of “modern day saints” who have sought the welfare of their city and promoted the common good, living as salt and light. The Beatitudes, a series of counterintuitive propositions from Jesus which challenge us to live humbly in faith, are key to understanding how we too may live as Salt and Light, challenging us to see power from a different paradigm. 

Illustrated by Matthew Vincent

Jesus’ call in the Beatitudes is radically countercultural, and may actually be a key to addressing toxic polarization from a faith perspective.  As Martin Luther King said,

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that." 

For this series on the Beatitudes, we invited Gen Zers to collaborate and bring these stories to life in a context that is relevant to their generation. Clapham staff members Libby Scroggins and Emily Fuller, alongside author Emma Runyan, worked together to uncover and shape modern examples that illustrate the beatitudes woven into the fabric of daily life. 

While there are endless stories that could illuminate these truths, they chose those in which the average reader might see themselves—stories that invite us to embody the beatitudes in the simple, everyday moments of our lives. The beauty of the beatitudes lies in their quiet power: they don’t call us to grand gestures, but to a way of being that transforms the ordinary into something profoundly meaningful.

We invite you to follow along on either Substack or Instagram these next weeks as our Gen Zers reflect on how we live out the challenge presented on the Sermon on the Mount, to “taste” and look like the Beatitudes. Like our biblical story of Daniel, this series is being illustrated by Matthew Vincent, who has beautifully captured the essence of this passage. 

If you subscribe to our Substack, a new comic page will be delivered to your inbox every Wednesday. On Fridays, we will also send an additional short essay to share more about Salt and Light Stories, with reflections on the page we released earlier in the week. To make the comic more accessible, you can now also find the full comic pages on our Instagram, @saltlightstories, but note that the accompanying essays will only be available through Substack.

As we shared when we first  launched this project, it is a grand experiment – we’d love for you to join us by subscribing to our Substack page, free of charge. We are excited to bring you these stories that have a profound impact on us.