Mennonite Weekly Review

CHICAGO — On the cover of 118 days: Christian Peacemaker Teams Held Hostage in Iraq are Palestinian children displaying photos of four CPT members kidnapped in Iraq in 2005 — one of the many expressions of support CPT received at that time.

Some of those stories have been compiled into a book edited by Tricia Gates Brown that the organization has published and launched June 5.

Carol Rose, CPT co-director, said the way Muslims such as those in Palestine stood up for the four Christian men was especially extraordinary and something CPT wants to give back.

“The way something that happened to four people inspired people all over the world to act with such faithfulness is something I’d like to see multiply,” said Carol Rose, CPT co-director. “I hope these stories will expand and show the way God works in even the hardest of times.”

The book includes chapters by CPT full-time members and reservists, as well as family, friends and fellow peace activists of the four men: Tom Fox, Norman Kember, James Loney and Harmeet Sooden. Tom Fox, who was killed March 9, 2006, is remembered especially in chapters by Loney and Elizabeth Pyles, another of Fox’s CPT colleagues, as well as in a profile by two members of Quaker meetings to which Fox was connected.

CPT’s Chicago headquarters launched the book with a potluck and program, as well as a time to thank the staff and volunteers who answered calls, posted information on the Web site, gave back rubs and coordinated meals. Rose led the group in reading “Sacred Heart Litany” by Loney, which he had written while in captivity meditating on a picture of the sacred heart of Jesus that was in the room where the four men were kept. The group also listened to the readings from the book, including from the chapter Loney wrote on Fox.

Afterward, Rose gave the group an update on Kember, Loney and Sooden. Kember wrote a book about his experience, and now continues doing peace work in England. Loney is still writing a book and lives in Toronto. Sooden is a graduate student in English literature in New Zealand.

CPT also encouraged people to promote the book by taking copies to local book stores and libraries to see if they will carry it, as well as linking their Web pages to the Web site where it can be purchased.

Sarah MacDonald, a full-time CPTer and member of First Mennonite Church in Iowa City, Iowa, was in Palestine for much of the time the four men were held hostage.

“Being in Palestine gave me a very clear window into the response of the Arab and Muslim worlds,” she said.

She recalls the outpouring of support from Muslim leaders as as a result of CPT’s long-term presence there. Macdonald hopes the book highlights the challenge for Christian peacemakers to be in even greater solidarity with people around the world facing larger, ongoing crises.

“I hope that it helps us to process this experience and as a community come to deeper and more visceral understandings both of the risk, and of the gifts, of what we’re doing,” she said. “This book is the story of both.”

The book “offers an absolutely unique and vital window into peace and justice work,” she said.