Our promise—
‘Good Media Builds Healthy Communities’ 

AS 2021 DRAWS TO A CLOSE …

THERE WERE MANY TRAGEDIES THIS YEAR—but the darkness also inspired countless men and women to shine hopeful lights in our world. Since our founding in 2007, our publishing house team has released a new lineup of ReadTheSpirit magazine stories every week. That means we’ve published nearly 750 weekly issues in all! To close out 2021, here are 12 of the most popular stories among the hundreds we published this year. The “most popular” ranking is based partly on the number of readers drawn to these stories as well as the levels of social-media sharing and the follow-up contacts we’ve had with readers, colleagues and friends around the world as a result of these stories.

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Creativity that Circles the Globe

WE START THIS YEAR-END LIST WITH A SPECIAL SALUTE to a writer whose professional expertise circles the globe and whose columns, since our founding in 2007, have now exceeded 2,000. We’re describing Holidays & Festivals columnist Stephanie Fenton, who closes her work in 2021 with a preview of New Year’s Eve—a story that includes her signature touch: links to DIY holiday ideas as well as yummy recipes. Thanks for all you’ve done for us in 2021 and over the past 14 years, Stephanie! We look forward to your coverage in 2022.

‘One large, sweeping tale’

AS 2021 BEGAN, author and photographer Rodney Curtis drew into sharp focus why these ever-moving cycles of seasons matter so much to all of us. Then, Rodney soon published a follow-up column with more fascinating photos, headlined simply: Papa Razi.  Thank you, Rodney, for your wonderful photos and stories!

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‘Unplugging Extremism’

IN JANUARY 2021, we published Bill Tammeus’s inspiring and very practical book, Love, Loss and Endurance, about how much we have learned—and how much we still need to learn about the legacy of 9/11/2001 at the 20th anniversary of those terrorist attacks. Why is it important to talk about these issues within your family, congregation and community? Bill’s answer is: Because we all can play a role in showing others how to balance our faith and our diversity in a peaceful way. In this Cover Story interview, Bill says, “We forget that every generation has to learn this stuff. … If we don’t do that, we fail ourselves and our communities and dangerous ways of thinking can emerge again. As every generation comes along, we have to teach the children well.”

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‘100 Ways to Find Hope and Be Love’

SINCE THE PANDEMIC BEGAN, readers have asked us, “What can I do to help the world right now?” The author Ken Whitt answered with a title affirmation that was spread across the front cover of his 2021 book: God Is Just Love. The book’s subtitle is, Building Spiritual Resilience and Sustainable Communities for the Sake of Our Children and Creation. For readers seeking ideas they can pursue immediately, Ken closed his book with “100 Things Families Can Do to Find Hope and Be Love.” Read this cover story from early 2021 in which Ken Whitt talks about his hopes for families and the caring communities we can form together. Want practical ideas? Get to know Ken through the pages of his new book and you’ll soon be overflowing with creative ideas yourself.

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‘Suzy’s back!’

AFTER A YEAR-LONG HIATUS, GodSigns columnist Suzy Farbman returned to the pages of our weekly online magazine. A couple of times each month, she brings us stories of the remarkable men and women she meets in her wide-ranging travels. Readers were thrilled when we welcomed her back to ReadTheSpirit early in 2021 with a story about a car-racing enthusiast from Detroit, the Motor City. Every week that a Suzy Farbman story  appears in our ReadTheSpirit mix, we hears from readers across the U.S. mainly by email, encouraging her to keep finding and sharing fun stories. She began her first column of 2021 this way: “If you’re born in Detroit, you’re born with a reverence for cars.” Clearly, many readers far beyond Detroit also enjoy a good car story.

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‘Meditation in Motion’

MANY COLUMNS in 2021 by author Lucille Sider could have been headlined with this phrase: “Meditation in Motion.” A wise and inspiring survivor who shares stories about her own spiritual explorations, Lucille always seems to focus on practical ideas to light up your day and revive your spirit. Here is her first column of 2021, which appeared back in April. Then, if you’re intrigued by Lucille’s work, here’s a link that conveniently indexes a number of her 2021 columns. (And, we also want to extend a special year-end salute to associate editor Cody Harrell, who collaborates with Lucille! Thanks for all you do, Cody.)

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Everybody Loves a Tasty Recipe!

ONE OF THE TRUTHS OF JOURNALISM is that some of the most popular columns ever published in newspapers and magazines involve recipes! So how did “the hot dog” column come to our pages? Well, author and journalist Martin Davis is one of several writers who has regaled our readers over the years with parallels between the American Spirit and the game of baseball. To mark Opening Day in 2021, Marty focused on a North Carolina style of hot dog that he strongly associates with his love of baseball. And, yes, he included a detailed recipe that included suggestions for trying to recreate his regional version of the hot dog. This led to countless readers actually trying to make the treat. For weeks after his column appeared, our home office would receive emails that asked questions such as: “Do we really need to find Duke’s mayonnaise?” You can read Marty’s Hymn to the Hot Dog and decide for yourself.

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Seeing and Hearing Our Authors

IN 2021, we saw a dramatic rise in the number of videos shared by our writers. In fact, in May, two of our authors collaborated on a video in which they discussed ways to cope with trauma in our lives. As Mindy opens this video dialogue, she says in part: “Grief and trauma are invisible. When we are experiencing grief and trauma you cannot see it. You can’t see it anywhere on me that I have suffered greatly and that I still have grief and that I still have instances of anger and sometimes I get very short tempered. But just because you cannot see it does not mean that it is not there. My book is the story of how a shattered soul ached to find the glue it needed to piece myself and my family back together.”

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A Multi-Media Treasure Trove

Just as that Mindy-and-Bill video was widely shared in 2021, the news of David Edwards’ memoir, What Belongs to God, was spread in part because of the links to Edwards’ treasure trove of multi-media resources. Before his passing in 2019, Edwards’ long career as a pastor, teacher and peace activist included his vocation as a singer-songwriter. Edwards’ family has archived resources from his music ministry online—and the family now invites readers to explore these gems.

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The Songs of Carrie Newcomer

MULTIMEDIA also was a key to the popularity of our Cover Story interview with Quaker singer-songwriter Carrie Newcomer. This story about Carrie’s work during the pandemic included news about her work with a cutting-edge streaming service that allows musicians to organize online events. We also quoted from Carrie’s thought-provoking lyrics, including:

I’m gonna row my boat like Molly Brown,
Picking up an oar, when the ship went down.
When she made it home, Molly kissed the ground,
I’m gonna row my boat like Molly Brown.

 

The First Americans

THROUGHOUT 2021, our writers have focused on news about Native communities across what is today North America. The most widely shared of our stories appeared in June, along with links to coverage of news about so-called Indian “boarding schools.” We also received a great deal of reader comments, via emails and even some calls to our office, about two other Native American stories we published this year. We called one of them Rethinking Thanksgiving and the other widely shared and discussed column was Bill Tammeus’s reporting on Land Acknowledgment.

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And For All We Lost This Year

FINALLY, EVERY ONE OF US—our publishing house team and our thousands of readers—will close this turbulent year with vivid memories of all we’ve lost this year. That’s why every major newspaper and magazine closes each year with eulogies for the notable people who left us. This year, the list is overwhelming from Archbishop Desmond Tutu to Stephen Sondheim, Larry McMurtry, Ed Asner, Hank Aaron, Beverly Cleary—and soooo many more that we will end our list with these few names. It took a writer of Duncan Newcomer’s stature to broaden our vision of life—and death—this year with his unique elegy to the passing of Sonnets, a noble cat whose life story has now circled the planet, thanks to Duncan.

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Faith & Film

ED McNULTY, for decades, has published reviews, magazine articles and books exploring connections between faith and film. Most of his work is freely published. Ed supports his work by selling the Visual Parables Journal, a monthly magazine packed with discussion guides to films. This resource is used coast-to-coast by individuals who love the movies and by educators, clergy and small-group leaders.

Among Ed’s free reviews and columns:

• WHO KILLED MALCOLM X? Documentarians Phil Bertelsen and Rachel Dretzin focus on the 30-year search by Abdur-Rahman Muhammad for details about the real assassins in Harlem’s Audubon Ballroom on February 21, 1965.
• BEING THE RICARDOS—Ed writes, “Writer-director Aaron Sorkin’s film  is a fascinating take on perhaps the most crucial week in the history of the I Love Lucy Show during its second season.”
• BENEDETTA—Director and co-writer Paul Verhoeven takes on a controversial tale of a 17th-century Catholic nun.
• THE POWER OF THE DOG—Ed writes, “Director/writer Jane Campion’s adaptation of Thomas Savage’s 1968 novel is set in Montana, but she has found a region of her native New Zealand as a serviceable stand-in.”
• WEST SIDE STORY—“Director Stephen Spielberg and scriptwriter Tony Kushner have triumphed in their revision of the smash Broadway and film musical West Side Story!”
• ENCANTO—“This time Disney transports us to the mountains of Columbia where the Madrigal family live in an enchanting village called the Encanto.”
• HOUSE OF GUCCI—”Director Ridley Scott’s sprawling film based on the sad history of the glamorous Gucci family and their fashion empire features some over the top performances by a gaggle of A-list actors.”
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  Forest Whitaker plays the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu in The Forgiven, a 2017 film.

  THE FORGIVEN—“Roland Joffé and co-writer Michael Ashton take us to South Africa where they focus upon the work of Archbishop Desmond Tutu (Forest Whitaker), President of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission shortly after the demise of apartheid.”

• PASSING—Ed writes, “Actress Rebecca Hall steps behind the camera to co-write and direct this adaptation of Nella Larsen’s 1929 Harlem Renaissance novel about two light-skinned black women able to fool a racist society by passing as white.”
• TED LASSO—In this column, Ed does what he does best: He draws parallels between pop culture and our spiritual traditions. In this case, Ed writes about how the popular TV series Ted Lasso could be enjoyed as a series of illustrations of Jesus’ Beatitudes

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