November Publishers Newsletter 2025

Dear Friends,

When the situation in the world (and our country) seems particularly bleak, I like to remember that none of us would be alive today if President John F. Kennedy (and his Soviet counterpart Nikita Khrushchev) had not peacefully resolved the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Not everyone felt this was a victory for peace. A year later JFK was dead. 

 

This is among the stories recounted in James W. Douglass’s landmark JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters (2008). His meticulously documented narrative traced the various steps by which JFK moved, during his three-year administration, from being a strong Cold Warrior to a determined peacemaker. This caused him to be seen, by his own defense-intelligence establishment, as a threat to national security who had to be eliminated.

 

Now, Orbis has published Douglass’s long-awaited sequel: Martyrs to the Unspeakable: The Assassinations of JFK, Malcolm, Martin, and RFK. Once again, Douglass shows how the death of all of these martyrs of the 1960s were essentially connected—all designed by the same forces and for the same reasons: to strike down those whose message of peace and justice threatened the national security state. Each of them was killed at a point when their witness posed a critical danger. In the case of Malcolm X, that was after his departure from the Nation of Islam and his efforts to forge an international alliance for human rights; for Martin Luther King, following his turn against the Vietnam War and his plans for a Poor People’s movement in opposition to racism, militarism and capitalism; for RFK, when his victory in the California primary cleared the way for his presidential bid on a ticket of peace and justice—and pursuit of the truth of his brother’s death. Each of these witnesses knew the risks they were taking—and acted regardless. Douglass hopes the truth of their lives and deaths will inspire us to continue their mission. 

 

Theologian Hans Küng offered the famous dictum: “No peace among the nations without peace among the religions. No peace among the religions without dialogue between the religions.” Toward that end, Retelling Sacred Stories: Our Journeys to a Shared Sacred Story offers an important contribution to peace. The result of a five-year project by the Fetzer Institute, this book gathered teams of scholars and spiritual leaders charged with composing a “story” that would convey the essential message of their tradition. The resulting book, which has garnered praise from religious leaders of every faith, concludes with an interfaith effort to tell a “shared sacred story” as a bridge for both seekers and believers.

 

Finally,  Organizing Visions: Social Ethics and Broad-Based Solidarity Activism, edited by Gary Dorrien, Charlene Sinclair, and Aaron Stauffer, is a powerful (and timely!) resource for scholars and activists working for justice and social change.       

 

May we all answer the call to pray without ceasing, and to work together for peace, 

 

Robert Ellsberg

Publisher