Every Church A Peace Church

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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.

Vision: The Church's Potential for a Large Witness

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ECAPC Vision

4th of 8 in a series.

4. The Church’s Potential for A Large and Impressive Witness

    Another reason the church is central in the ECAPC peacemaking strategy is that there is strength in numbers. In the history of social change, maybe especially in the USA, individuals have often tried to stand alone for the truth. They do it always with some effect, but seldom with great effect. A corporate voice is needed to impact corporate behavior.

    We’ve all seen the struggle of the person of conscience, the prophetic individual or peace activist, to find allies and to increase their impact as a lone individual. How often have we said, “If a thousand or a million people would do this....” And the question is, where do we turn for company and to multiply the strength of our voice?

    The strategy of Every Church A Peace Church is to strike a middle ground between expecting the lonely prophet to go it alone, and expecting the public at large to join the movement right now. By focusing on changing the church, intentionally, now, and first, ECAPC assumes a modest but challenging task. It is not hopelessly idealistic (though we have sympathy for those who think it is) nor is it apathetically realistic (assuming that nothing can change).

    The church exists in every nook and cranny of this nation, and just about of the world itself. This tremendous ubiquity of the church makes it, from a standpoint of pure pragmatism, a logical focus of an effort to promote peace in homes, communities and the world.

    Beyond that, for all who approach the challenge as Christians, or church members themselves, to make the church the focus of their energies is a no-brainer, as they say. Surely if we who are in the church do not believe in it enough to make an effort to change it for the better, we should get out of the way and make room for someone who will try. Anyone looking on from outside of the church surely has every reason to expect we who call ourselves “Christians” to make the church a community which models Jesus as far as that is possible.

    We must address the monumental problem of people looking on and seeing in the church almost nothing but astonishing betrayals of the most fundamental elements of Jesus’ life and teachings. A corporate modeling by the church of Jesus way of healing, hope and truth-telling would astonish the world in another way. It would give the world an alternative to the suicidal practice of “redemptive” violence in response to evil and evil doers. A church alive will show that annihilation and isolation do not exhaust the possible ways of responding to threatening people and situations. The church’s potential for public witness is a tremendous untapped resource.