Dan Trabue

Profile: We are the successor congregation to the Union Gospel Mission, founded in the 19th C. by a converted riverboat gambler turned Baptist preacher. Our ministry has always been with one of the poorest sections of Louisville. Our small congregation of about 100 adult members (plus children) is composed of Clarksdale residents (working poor people), some homeless people, and a collection of mostly lower-middle class folk attracted to our mission (mostly social workers, hospice chaplains, public school teachers, but including a couple of attorneys and 2 socially-responsible investment counselors, and an alternative energy engineer). Our neighborhood is about 70% African-American, but our congregation, unfortunately, is about 70% white and the rest African-American. At one time we also had Asian members and one Native American, but no longer. The neighborhood is currently undergoing "re-gentrification" efforts and we are struggling as a church to be sure that the poor of our neighborhood are well-treated. We have two "transitional housing" projects for the poor, Norma's House & the Mary Jane Toni House, both named for major contributors to the projects who live the New Testament practice of hospitality.

Denomination: Alliance of Baptists, a small denomination of progressive Baptist churches, most of whom split from the Southern Baptist Convention when that body was taken over by militant fundamentalists in the 1980s & 1990s. Thanks to sponsorship by its covenant partner denominations, the United Church of Christ and the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), the Alliance is the newest member body of the National Council of Churches and is currently applying for membership in the World Council of Churches, too.

Other Affiliations: Jeff Street Baptist Community at Liberty is a partner congregation of the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America. Our strong commitment to religious liberty and church/state separation finds expression in our support of the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs. Our deep commitment to social justice, human rights, and human dignity finds expression in numerous ways: We welcome all persons regardless of race, gender, wealth, status, or sexual orientation and for this reason are a member congregation of The Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists. We are also a founding congregation and active member of CLOUT: Citizens of Louisville Organized & United Together, a grassroots, community-organizing, approach to justice and citizen empowerment in our city & county. (CLOUT's Head Organizer, Robert Owens, an ordained Presbyterian minister, just happens also to be the spouse of our pastor, Rev. Cindy Weber!)

Pastor: Reverend Cindy Weber.

A Statement on Peace
(Rationale Follows Below...)

From Jeff St. Baptist Community at Liberty

"But I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you."
Jesus Christ, Luke 6:27-28

As a community of faith we have covenanted together:
to work to ensure that Creation is respected, enhanced, and protected;
to speak out against all forms of oppression to ensure the dignity and worth of all people;
to accept our responsibility as ministers of reconciliation in the world by helping people to accept one another and God, and;
to promote peace and justice in all life circumstances.

As a community of faith we further declare that:
Peace is the will of God and all war is sin.

All persons are created in the image of God and owe their first allegiance to God.
All persons have the responsibility:
to read and interpret the Scriptures,
to reflect on their religious experience in order to understand peacemaking for them and the world, and
to obey God's will for peace above all human directives, even when obedience requires conscientious objection or civil disobedience.

As a community of faith we believe that all persons should examine and speak out against individual, corporate, and national participation in the forms of political and economic oppression that cause war and work, even if at some cost to themselves, to discover constructive avenues of peacemaking within these venues, for in doing so we demonstrate our obedience to Jesus Christ.

Rationale and Implications of "A Statement on Peace"¹

Adopted by Jeff Street Baptist Community at Liberty 10 March 2002

I. Biblical Basis of Peacemaking
The biblical witness on issues of war and peacemaking is large and complex, but several central strands of that witness are clear. The Hebrew prophets all paint visions of peace in the age of the Messiah. For instance, the prophet Isaiah says, " . . . [T]hey shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more." (Isa. 2:4) Similar visions and commands of peace are found throughout the Hebrew prophets (e.g., Isa. 9:1-7; 31:1; Hos. 2:18; Micah:4: 3-4; Jer. 29:1-14, etc). As Christians, we believe that Jesus is the Messiah and thus embodies this hope for a messianic peace. In Jesus' teachings, such as the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5-7) and the Sermon on the Plain (Luke 6:20-49), we are taught to love our enemies and pray for our persecutors, not to resist evil violently, but to take transforming initiatives for peace and reconciliation. Christ's reconciling death is the basis of our peace with God (Rom. 5:10) and with one another (Rom. 12:21; Eph. 2:13-16). Christ’s resurrection demonstrates God's vindication of his teaching and example of unarmed, noncoercive, delivering love.

II. A Heritage of Struggle for Justice and Peace
Since our beginnings in the 17th Century, a large number of Baptists have been peacemakers. Our earliest heritage as English Puritan-Separatists who were taught to be more Christ-centered by Dutch Anabaptists included a strong stream of pacifists and an even greater number of "near-pacifist" peacemakers.² Some of the strongest Christian voices for nonviolence and peacemaking are also among the most important shapers of Baptist life and thought, including Walter Rauschenbusch, Muriel Lester, Clarence Jordan, Howard Thurman, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Peacemaking and nonviolence are also a part of the history of our own congregation: In the 1930s, we were one of the mission churches supervised by Baptist pacifist Clarence Jordan and among our former pastors is Henlee Barnette, a peacemaking Christian ethicist and an activist against the Vietnam War. More recently, we became a covenant congregation with the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America and our members, sometimes as individuals and sometimes as a congregation, have been involved in many nonviolent movements for peace and justice. Further, our church covenant already commits us to "promote peace and justice in all life circumstances."³ Therefore, in identifying ourselves as a congregation of peace, we declare no new teaching, but name explicitly an identity we already possess. Our history and present life already demonstrate our developing convictions concerning violence, war, nonviolence and active peacemaking. In this declaration, we seek to name those convictions more concretely so that all will be clear about our stand.

III. Our Specific Peace Commitments
Un most discussions of war and peacemaking, the debate becomes stuck between pacifists, who renounce all war and all use of lethal violence, and just war theorists who believe that war is sometimes a "lesser of evils" and, therefore, permissible under certain very limited conditions. While this debate is important, it often deteriorates into a debate over whether to go to war, and when, if ever. Lost in such discussions are the active practices which seek peace founded on justice. We affirm the emerging ethic of just peacemaking which advocates practices that actively promote peace and justice, practices which work to build a culture of true peace, peace which is the presence of justice and not simply the absence of visible conflict.⁴ Commonly agreed upon practices of just peacemaking include:

• Support nonviolent direct action in movements for social justice
• Take independent initiatives to reduce the threat to the adversary
• In situations of conflict, use techniques of creative conflict resolution
• Acknowledge responsibility for one’s own role in conflict and injustice and seek repentance and forgiveness
• Advance participatory democracy and democratic reforms
• Advance respect for human rights and religious liberty for everyone
• Foster just and sustainable economic development
• Work with emerging cooperative forces in the international system, including the United Nations
• Reduce weapons stockpiles and the weapons trade
• Encourage grassroots peacemaking groups and voluntary associations for justice⁵

We seek to state our peace convictions plainly and clearly, saying yes to God and no to the warring ways of this world:

1. We declare that peace and peacemaking are the will of God and that all war is sin. As we seek to "wage peace" ⁶ and promote practices of just peacemaking, we aim to build a culture of peace. Therefore, we call upon all our members to learn methods of conflict resolution, practices of nonviolent defense, and to continue striving to become peaceable persons in both our inner and outer lives.

2. We urge all our members to refuse to participate in military service in any way:

a) We will support all men and women who would seek to become conscientious objectors to all war and military service, who seek legal recognition as conscientious objectors and, in the event of a return to military conscription, will perform alternative national service in voluntary agencies of compassion and mercy.

b) We respect the liberty of conscience of those among us who would serve in the military. If they seek to become noncombatant conscientious objectors, we will support them fully, upholding their legal right to be trained without weapons and to serve the military only in roles consistent with Christian practices of compassion, mercy, and love for enemies.

c) Some among us may be convinced by their consciences that they must not cooperate with the Powers and Authorities of war in any degree. Therefore, these persons will refuse even to register with the Selective Service Board (currently a legal requirement for all men from age 18-23). We will support those of our number who become nonregistrant conscientious objectors, even though, in so doing they are committing civil disobedience, breaking human laws in order to obey their understanding of the law of God.

We will support all these persons with our prayers and spiritual counsel. We will support conscientious objectors with our monetary support and legal counsel.

3. We proclaim that our first allegiance as Christians is to God even when obedience to God requires civil disobedience to human laws.

4. We condemn the outrageous expenditures of the government for military forces and weapons of destruction. We further condemn all attempts to rationalize or make palatable huge war machines in the name of "defense" or "security."

5. We call for complete abolition of all nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. We call for independent initiatives for disarmament of these weapons of mass destruction.

6. We call on all governments to provide alternatives to heavy taxes for the military, including the creation of "peace tax funds" that allow conscientious objectors to war to pay all of their taxes without violating their consciences. We support fully those of our members who are "war tax resisters," that is, who resist paying portions of their taxes that would be used for military purposes.

7. We encourage all our members to seek employment outside those industries with heavy defense contracts. We further encourage our members to examine their purchasing patterns and boycott products produced and sold by companies that derive large amounts of their income from military contracts. We further encourage our members to live simply and use their investments, savings, and purchasing patterns to support those companies and practices that promote peace, nonviolence, and sustainable development for all peoples.

8. We recognize the legitimacy of government as an instrument that God often uses for good in the world. Although we dissent from the military practices of our government, we are reminded to respect the offices held by our government leaders. We must also give government leaders and members of the military the respect and dignity owed to all humans as bearers of the image of God. We will pray for members of the militaries of all nations -- pray that they come to no bodily harm, pray that they remember to be persons of mercy and compassion, pray that they never be ordered to commit atrocities or shed human blood. We remember our duty as Christians to pray for our governmental leaders and the leaders of all nations. We pray they will turn away from war and violence and learn practices of just peacemaking that the earth may become a more just and peaceful world.

9. All humans sin and fall short of perfection. We recognize the many areas of our lives that fall short of this declaration of our convictions. Through listening prayer we seek the guidance of the Holy Spirit on those areas where we still embody the spirit of the Powers of war and violence. We seek the Spirit's aid in repenting those shortcomings and in being re-fashioned into a people of peace. Amen.

¹ In drafting this document, a number of model peace statements were consulted, including those by the Mennonite Church, USA, the American Baptist Churches, USA, and others. The statement by the Church of the Brethren was found to be especially helpful.

² See the chronicle of much of this heritage in Paul R. DeKar, For the Healing of the Nations: Baptist Peacemakers (Macon, GA: Smyth & Helwys Press, 1993).

³ Church Covenant, Jeff. Street Baptist Community at Liberty, 1982.

⁴ See the pioneering work by Glen H. Stassen, Just Peacemaking: Transforming Initiatives for Justice and Peace (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992) and the five-year collaborative project of multiple scholars, Just Peacemaking: Ten Practices for Abolishing War, ed. Glen H. Stassen (Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim Press, 1998). Stassen has become a Baptist pacifist, but the "just peacemaking" ethic can and has been embraced by many who are not complete pacifists, even by some who identify with the just war tradition. It is when these practices fail to stop a conflict, war, etc, that one must choose between remaining nonviolent or reluctantly taking up arms within the strict confines of just war principles.

⁵ For more on all these practices, see Stassen, ed., Just Peacemaking: Ten Practices for Abolishing War (Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim Press, 1998).

⁶ A phrase emphasizing that peace must be pursued as actively as others pursue or "wage" war. Based on a poem (1974) by Walker Knight, "Peace, Like War, Must Be Waged," adopted in 1985 as a motto of the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America.