News of American torture prompts fresh opposition

Beyond Moral Outrage, Torture Is Counterproductive

COVER STORY—Since our publishing house was founded in 2007, many of our authors and columnists have written about their commitments toward world peace. The first author we published is international peace trainer Daniel Buttry, whose books include Blessed Are the Peacemakers. As a community of writers, we have pursued these themes for 14 years. Flash forward to 2021, and we have just published David Edwards’ What Belongs to God: Reflections on Peacemaking by a Conscientious Objector and Bill Tammeus’ Love, Loss and Endurance: A 9/11 Story of Resilience and Hope in an Age of Anxiety.

For many years, Bill also has been one of the leading American journalists covering religion, and writing commentaries about the complex interrelationship between faith and culture. When news broke in the case of detainee Majid Kahn this week, Bill reported this Cover Story for our readers. Please read this story and share it with friends.

Why We Can’t Look Away

Larry Buxton: On The Temptation of Simply ‘Moving On’

AVOIDING UNCOMFORTABLE ISSUES will not bring us peace, Larry Buxton explains this week in his Leading with Spirit video. As you visit Larry’s website to watch that short video, take a moment to sign up for his free email reminders about new videos. Larry also posts his videos to YouTube, which means they are easy to share with friends. They can be shared with your small group or Sunday School class. They’re great for individual reflection and for sparking discussions.

Holidays & Festivals

Veterans Day

OUR PUBLISHING HOUSE also has published a series of books sharing the stories of American veterans, including the memoir of the oldest living Black graduate of West Point—plus the memoir of a Vietnam-era Conscientious Objector. Susan Stitt writes a Front Edge Publishing column this week that describes those remarkable stories and include links if you care to learn more about these books from Amazon.

Then, our official Holidays & Festivals columnist Stephanie Fenton writes about the origins of this holiday, which has parallel observances around the world—including Remembrance Day in Canada.

Christmas Is Coming

Sooner Than You Think

STEPHANIE FENTON also reports on the start of the Eastern Orthodox Nativity Fast, the traditional period of preparing for Christmas, which begins even before American Thanksgiving this year.

WANT TO SEE ALL THE UPCOMING HOLIDAYS & FESTIVALS?—It’s easy to find our annual calendar of global observances. Just visit InterfaithHolidays.com

And from our authors …

Lucille Sider

Do you have an animal friend in your life?

LUCILLE SIDER writes, this week, about the remarkable way her beloved cat PJ wound up connecting her with family, neighbors and even two local congregations in new ways.

On LGBTQ Inclusion

OUR BIAS BUSTERS TEAM, based at the Michigan State University School of Journalism, was honored this week to find their books recommended in articles posted in the Pretty Progressive online magazine. Please, read the following and consider recommending some of these books to friends.

Pretty Progressive headline: Experts Tell Us the Best LGBT Books for Parents
Pretty Progressive headline: Experts Tell Us the Best LGBT Books for Teachers

OUR AUTHOR RODNEY CURTIS also occasionally writes about TV and film. Click on this image to read his dual review of Only Murders in the Building and Squid Games. He titles this review “One’s delightful; one’s disgusting.” Can you guess which is which? Thanks Rodney!

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.

THIS WEEK, Ed McNulty also adapted his coverage of the thought-provoking film Sons and Daughters of Thunder for the audience at the Presbyterian Church-USA’s international website, focusing on how the film’s themes of racial justice are directly connected to Presbyterians.

Among Ed’s free reviews and columns:

NO TIME TO DIE—While Ed is ambivalent about the violence and overall message of the latest Bond thriller, he does heartily recommend that viewers read Benjamin Pratt’s book about Ian Fleming and James Bond. Use this link to read Ed’s review of No Time to Die.
SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF THUNDER—In recommending this film, Ed writes, “Director Kelly Rundle’s film about the students’ debates in 1834 over slavery at Cincinnati’s Lane Seminary is based on the play by Earlene Hawley and Curtiss Heeter.“
THE GUILTY—Ed writes, “Director Antoine Fuqua and writer Nic Pizzolatto have done a fine job of adapting a 2018 Danish film to the American scene. The film is a thriller, a very intense one, but one with a social conscience that deserves to be seen and discussed widely.”
MASS—”This is one of the best films I have seen this year. It includes one of the most powerful scenes of grief and reconciliation that I have seen in a film.”
FLAG DAY—Ed praises this film in which three members of the Penn family portray the family of a con man.
THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL (1951)—”This is the 70th anniversary of the release of this classic science fiction film. It stood out at the time as the most intelligent film of the genre, carrying a message of peace and tolerance during the onslaught of the Cold War. Unlike other sci-fi films, the menace to Earth came not from alien monsters but from humans themselves.”
SON OF THE SOUTH—”Writer-director Barry Alexander Brown’s film is based on Bob Zellner’s well-received 2008 autobiography The Wrong Side of Murder Creek: A White Southerner in the Freedom Movement.”
REMINISCE—Ed McNulty writes, “Writer-director Lisa Joy blends film noir with science fiction in this tale set in a near future Miami whose streets are being flooded as climate change causes the ocean to rise. Nick Bannister (Hugh Jackman) is the jaded detective whose specialty is the past.”
COME FROM AWAY—”The horrific events that occurred 20 years ago on 9/11 reveal the evil depths that humanity can sink to, but this filmed version of David Hein and Irene Sankoff’s Broadway play celebrates the heights to which humanity can rise.”
DAYS OF GLORY—”Co-writer/director Rachid Bouchareb provides a very different perspective on World War II in this tale centering on four North African Muslims who enlist to free what they regard as their fatherland, France.”