A nationwide community of readers awaits this version of ‘Quiet Fire’

By DAVID CRUMM
Editor of ReadTheSpirit

Long-time followers of Lincoln scholar Duncan Newcomer have been awaiting Duncan’s “magnum opus” on the spiritual values that Abraham Lincoln brought to our deeply divided nation. Now, Conrad Kanagy, a sociologist, religion scholar and the founder of Santos Press, has announced that he will be working with Duncan in 2025 to finally publish what Duncan has been describing to audiences as his “big book.” The working title, we’re told, is Quiet Fire: The Spiritual Life of Abraham Lincoln.

This comes as wonderful news to Duncan’s myriad of friends nationwide—including a long list of journalists (Duncan has appeared many times in ReadTheSpirit magazine and has befriended readers, as well, through The Christian Science Monitor) and noted authors such as Peter Wallace, Greg Garrett, Jon Sweeney and Bob Cornwall (all four of whom are online friends of Kanagy’s publishing efforts).

For writers and editors who specialize in exploring spiritual values—especially those values that might help Americans navigate today’s deeply divided national landscape—this announcement is good news in troubling times.

What is “Quiet Fire”?

That two-word phrase has become the trademark for Duncan’s many public reflections on Lincoln over the years, whether on public radio or via newspapers, magazines, books, podcasts and public appearances. Duncan now is credited among Lincoln scholars for coining that evocative phrase to describe the deep core of Lincoln’s beliefs and personality.

As evidence of his influence with that phrase, Google’s AI summary currently reports:

While there isn’t a directly attributed quote from Abraham Lincoln that explicitly says “quiet fire,” the phrase is often used to describe his character, signifying a deep inner strength and resolve that was not outwardly flamboyant but rather quietly powerful; this association has been popularized by writers and historians who study Lincoln’s life and personality, particularly in works like Duncan Newcomer’s book “Quiet Fire, the Spiritual Life of Abraham Lincoln.”

To hear Duncan describe the origins of the phrase himself, watch this video interview with Conrad Kanagy, which recently was posted as part of Kanagy’s early promotion of the upcoming book.

You’re welcome to prepare for the big book’s release with daily doses of ‘Quiet Fire’

Part of Duncan Newcomer’s success in fostering a national awareness of Lincoln’s deep spiritual foundations rests on Duncan’s persuasive ways of making friends with other scholars and media professionals nationwide. Among his friends, for example, is The Christian Science Monitor’s Mark Sappenfield, who took over the reins of that storied newspaper in 2017. Mark’s own interest in probing spiritual and moral perspectives on American life has led to a long-standing series of connections between Duncan and that newspaper.

Duncan also convinced public radio producers to let him experiment with this theme in a series of short broadcasts that eventually reached a total of about 300 episodes.

“Since its beginning, radio has offered a warm medium for connecting the heart, the head, and the imagination. This delightful collection of Lincoln’s wisdom was seeded in a creative radio show, Quiet Fire,” said Sally Kane, former CEO of the National Federation of Community Broadcasters, the network where this series was born on local WERU, a station in mid-coastal Maine. “Now, Quiet Fire has morphed into a daily companion for readers who connect the dots between time and space to map a new understanding of the chaotic times in which we live. Lincoln’s words resonate more urgently than ever, and Duncan has played alchemist in Quiet Fire to one of our country’s greatest souls and distilled an essence that can guide and comfort us.”

Click on the cover to visit the book’s Amazon page.

Meanwhile, Duncan already had become a popular contributing columnist in ReadTheSpirit magazine—and our publishing house produced a 30-day book based on his Quiet Fire broadcasts. That book is part of our ongoing series of “30 Days With” inspirational readers. Duncan’s Lincoln volume is titled: 30 Days with Abraham Lincoln—Quiet Fire.

However, beyond all of those waves of Duncan Newcomer media on the theme of Lincoln’s Quiet Fire—there still was a much longer manuscript sitting in Duncan’s office in Maine. In that magnum opus, Duncan wove together threads from Lincoln’s life into a larger tapestry that Duncan hoped would stand the test of time as an essential scholarly perspective on Lincoln’s spirit, faith and values.

That’s where Conrad Kanagy stepped into this network of relationships. Kanagy is best known nationally as the biographer of theologian Walter Brueggemann. Conrad also has been a popular professor of sociology at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania. In the fall of 2024, Conrad announced he would retire after the current academic year—which will give him more time to work with the independent publishing house he founded in Elizabethtown, Santos Books.

When Conrad learned about Duncan’s body of work—and the unpublished “big book”—he began his efforts to grow Duncan’s audience by bringing the archive of those hundreds of original Quiet Fire public radio episodes to Spotify for easy access in coming years.

As a result, right now if you’d care to start on your own relationship with Duncan—and his vision of Abraham Lincoln as a spiritual mentor for our times—simply visit that Spotify link and you’ll find the first group of episodes.

Duncan, Conrad and Abraham: ‘A Perfect Fit’

Conrad says he’s proud to play this crucial role in Duncan’s vast national network of colleagues.

“The goal of our publishing company is to tell the sacred stories of individuals through biography, memoir, or autobiography,” Conrad said this week. “By sacred, I mean those stories that are special, unique, set apart, from the ordinary and everyday way we think of ourselves.”

That’s why his publishing house is such an important vocational step for him, Conrad said. “The goal of Santo Books is to share our stories so that each individual in our books can be seen as God sees them: loved by God, belonging to God, lovable to God—even those who don’t believe in God.”

So, the latest “chapter” in the overall story of Duncan’s and Lincoln’s “Quiet Fire” will come from Conrad’s press in 2025—because, as Conrad puts it, “Duncan’s story of Abraham Lincoln is a perfect fit—both in terms of how he saw others, but also in terms of how clearly he understood the sacredness of the other.”

And amid the deep chasms in American life and culture right now, Conrad says, there’s not a more important message to publish.

Stay tuned to ReadTheSpirit magazine for further news about the availability of this new book in 2025. We have asked Conrad and Duncan to alert us to the book’s availability for pre-sale, when it is listed on Amazon in 2025. As soon as we hear that good news—we’ll share it with all of you.