September Publishers Newsletter 2025
ida decesaris
SEPTEMBER 2025
Dear Friends,
I was grateful to see these words by one of our new authors, Father Dustin Feddon, in the acknowledgements to his new book: “I am inspired by Orbis Books’ mission to publish provocative, justice-themes books in a world increasingly in need of prophetic voices.” Of course those voices belong to our authors, many of whom write from situations that cry for justice, mercy, and healing.
Father Dustin, a Catholic priest who has spent many years accompanying men on death row and in solitary confinement, is one of those voices. His book More than Half Way Home: A Story of Accompaniment in the Shadows of Incarceration, tells the story of his ministry, the men he has come to know, and his efforts, through the not-for-profit Joseph House, to create a community that welcomes people back into the human family. As Father Dustin says, his book is about what he has learned “about goodness in the world, about how porous reality is between us, and about the slow and meandering work of redemption.”
From another side of the world comes The Cross and the Olive Tree: Cultivating Palestinian Theology amid Gaza, a painfully raw expression of faith and the struggle for life amidst one of the world’s most terrible sites of human suffering. As the editors, brothers John Munayer and Samuel Munayer write, “Every word in this book is accompanied by the screams of children, images of destruction, bodies torn by violence, torture, and rape.” The contributors, all Palestinian Christians, offer a crucial and vibrant perspective on liberation, reconciliation, and divine imagination. Writing from the heart of suffering, they show how the cross and the olive tree interpret each other as unwavering symbols of faith, hope, and homeland.
When there is so much to be done, and sometimes little to show for it, how do we maintain our engagement in the struggle for justice over the long-haul? Wes Granberg-Michaelson, who has spent fifty years working at the intersection of faith, justice, and public life, shows us how in The Soulwork of Justice: Four Movements for Contemplative Action. Now, writing as an elder and “contemplative activist” on this path, he shows how our “inward and outward” journey must become interwoven. And he proposes four specific disciplines or “movements” to accomplish that.
Since the death of Pope Francis in April, we have continued to think of the many ways his ministry and message inspired and supported our program over the years. In I Am a Mission this Earth, we have compiled many of his central themes—on mission, peace, care for the earth, solidarity with migrants, drawn from the more than twenty volumes of his writing we published. Underlying them all are his words: “My mission of being in the heart of the people is not just a part of my life or a badge I can take off. . . Instead, it is something I cannot uproot from my being without destroying my very self. I am a mission on this earth; that is the reason why I am here in this world.”
All these voices inspire and remind us of our own mission on this earth.
Peace,
Robert Ellsberg
Publisher