Publishers Newsletter - November
Posted by ida decesaris on
Dear Friends,
What to say about the conclusion of a divisive election season? What to say about a victory marked by “brazen appeals to nativism, racism, and misogyny” (New York Times); a campaign fueled by the demonization of migrants and refugees (“animals,” “vermin”); punctuated by violent threats of retribution against political rivals (“the enemy within)”—all in pursuit of “Making America Great Again”?
In his speech before Congress almost ten years ago Pope Francis offered a very different vision of what makes a nation great. As he observed, “A nation can be considered great when it defends liberty as Lincoln did, when it fosters a culture which enables people to ‘dream’ of full rights for all their brothers and sisters, as Martin Luther King sought to do; when it strives for justice and the cause of the oppressed as Dorothy Day did by her tireless work, the fruit of a faith which becomes dialogue and sows peace in the contemplative style of Thomas Merton.”
And so what will we do? We will carry on, publishing books that affirm that higher standard of “greatness,” a vision informed by mercy, a passion for justice, care for creation, and solidarity with those on the margins. We remember the special words Pope Francis addressed to Orbis, in commending our publishing program. He spoke of the demand to cultivate, “especially in the younger generation, an imagination that would help them believe that another way of writing history is possible.”
Several new books meet that assignment. Dorothy Day: Spiritual Writings is the sixth volume of Day’s writings I have edited, and it is the one I would offer as an introduction. It shows the spiritual themes that underlay her life with the poor, her public witness for peace and justice, and her call for a “revolution of the heart.”
Books addressing the critical theme of white supremacy include two in our new series on “Ethics and Intersectionality.” Critical Race Theology: White Supremacy, American Christianity, and the Culture Wars by Juan M. Floyd-Thomas, examines the ways that white nationalism is imbedded in the theology and practice of American Christians, and calls on clergy and believers truly to embody the liberating spirit of Jesus’ radical ethic of love.
In Up Against a Crooked Wall: Black Women’s Bodies and the Politics of Redemption, Melanie Jones Quarles offers a new womanist approach that centers Black women’s moral agency and embodied experience of the Divine in face of the forces in church and society that press them down.
And finally, Roger Haight, SJ, in Facing Race: The Gospel in an Ignatian Key, explores the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius and their call to self-examination and conversion to the Gospel in light of the social sin of racism.
From the gospels, Dorothy Day drew the lesson that the most significant events of history are not necessarily measured by what occurs in palaces and the great seats of power. Often they occur at the margins, even disguised as failure. Such a vision lies at the heart of the approaching Advent season, and the hope, now sleeping in darkness, that lies hidden from the mighty of this world.
