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Individuals, small groups,and congregations are invited to join the National Registry of Peace Churches. More...
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| Following Jesus in nonviolent struggle for justice and peace, we love our neighbors and enemies
as God loves us all, becoming a peace church to share in God’s work to save the world. |
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Why Declare Your Church A Peace Church?
Fifty Reasons for Joining the National Registry of Peace Churches
http://www.ecapc.org/Registry.asp
The National Resgistry of Peace Churches is a listing of churches which affirm the following principles:
1. We, the churches, groups and individuals listed on the registry below hereby give public expression to our intention to walk the journey of nonviolent peacemaking and in our own way to support the movement to make every church a peace church.
2. We have committed to a process of prayer, study, and action, focused on Jesus’ call to love all, even our enemies, and a vision that the church could turn the world toward peace if every church lived and taught as Jesus lived and taught.
Fifty additional reasons to register:
Fifty additional reasons to register:
1. To locate and identify with your friends, creating solidarity with the wider community
of Christian nonviolence for unity and strength. To know who stands with you in the struggle against corporate greed and imperial pride.
2. Because we admire Muslims and followers of other religions who are committed to peace.
3. Because Jesus taught nonviolence, blessed the peacemakers, and practiced forgiveness of enemies .
4. To create a welcoming place for people who are outside of the community of faith who are seeking a better way than the suicidal militarism of empire.
5. To explore and experiment with the power of compassion, love and nonviolence.
6. The peace church way is a stronger way to engage the struggle against evil.
7. It is a clearer witness to the God who is love.
8. The world is looking for a peace church to model a way into a livable future.
9. To join a rich tradition of faithfulness down through Christian history.
10. Because the peace church chooses a path to justice which does not deny justice by its method.
11. A peace church is inclusive, not exclusive. Homicide/murder/killing is the ultimate act of exclusion. Once that is permitted in some cases, it is a threat in all cases and undermines the trust which is essential for building relationships in the inevitable conflicts of life
12. To support conscientious objectors, and warn church members who are potential military enlistees or draftees of the spiritual and mental degradation consequent to participation in the carnage and homicide of war.
13. The peace church implements the relationships envisioned in Jesus’ teaching of the reign, or kingdom, of God.
14. The peace church can organize to honor the heroes of nonviolence past and present.
15. It is a step toward the development of a culture of peace.
16. A peace church addresses racism, a persisting bane of human community.
17. It transcends tribalism and nationalism, and is loyal to humanity.
18. It is a discipleship way of courage and risk, but also of great reward.
19. All religions are welcome in the circle of nonviolent struggle, and can embrace peace without compromising their virtues or losing what is positive in their identity.
20. Children understand the peace church, and will even imitate it.
21. It is a matter of integrity and consistency; make the peace church affirmatiion to avoid embarrassment about the gap between word and deed.
22. It is the wave of the future. Pragmatically, if there is a future it will look like this.
23. History’s greatest heroes, its most admirable individuals, were pacifists.
24. As an act of repentance for the Crusades, the Inquisition and the religious wars.
25. It is a third way which avoids the worst and includes the best of the conservative and liberal traditions.
26. Before a watching world the peace church stands distinguished, by name, from a militarized right wing church.
27. For Biblical integrity. The peace church agrees with the way Jesus interpreted his Bible.
28. For mental comfort, integrity. The dissonance of claiming to follow Jesus while killing one’s enemies is not good for mental or spiritual health.
29. Unity with the historical integrity and power of the Black Freedom Movement.
30. A foundation to foster a culture of nonviolence, and curb violence in homes, schools and streets.
31. To clearly renounce and distance ones self from nuclear, chemical and biological weapons-- from all weapons of mass destruction.
32. Institutionally the peace church is the right answer to Jesus historic and universal question: Is it lawful to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill? (Mark 3)
33. In an age of “permanent war” the peace church speeaks an unmistakable “no” to war and its causes, and a yes to all that promotes peace and unity.
34. As a sign and action of love for the creation, and ecological sanity.
35. For the children and grandchildren of the future, so that they have a future.
36. People are impressed and attracted by lists of people and institutions of virtue, and by large numbers of the same.
37. For the sake of consistency between the nonviolent conflict resolution which we try to teach our children, and the way we act as adults
38. Nonviolent peacemaking is a truth, stance, cause and witness worth dying for; and since in the end we all die for what we lived for, even if we are not martyrs in the traditional sense, to live in a self-identified peace church prepares one for a good death.
39. A peace church excludes mere transient self-interest from its considerations. It is committed to the defense of objective truth and right and above all of human beings (in the words of Thomas Merton). If this sounds too lofty, we can look at today’s world to see what comes of not making this lofty effort.
40. It expresses belief in the essential unity of humankind, the best of the ecumenical vision, and thus becomes in itself the future which it wishes to create.
41. The peace church identifies the church today with the first followers of Jesus, the church of the Apostolic age, which was nonviolent.
42. It identifies the church with the needy and the powerless of the world, for whom the creation of a just economic system is a central concern of compassionate people.
43. A peace church is committed to that patience and perseverance which mark the difference between adult and child; it rejects the illusion of the quick fix which violence falsely promises.
44. A peace church does to others as it would have them do to itself, first by refusing to take the life of the other, and then by seeking reconciliation with untiring, patient effort.
45. A peace church embodies a more Christian and humane notion of what is possible than the notions of a world steeped in so-called political realism.
46. A peace church welcomes the Holy Spirit of truth and love and repulses the enslaving spirit of lies and death. It is nurtured by a spirituality of life.
47. To be committed to accepting the truth of others, even of the enemy, rather than self-righteously claiming to be the repository of all truth.
48. To show that we believe of all adults what every good parent believes of their own children: that there is unrealized potential beneath whatever hostility or ignorance is visible at the moment in the other.
49. To refuse unequivocally to create a wasteland and call it peace.
50. To acknowledge that the church cannot accomplish with its prayers what it refuses to practice with its politics.
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And one more for good measure: Because of what it would mean to say “We considered those three affirmations and decided we could not do it.”
May, 2006
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