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 Gods work to save the world.

Abel's Blood - Genesis 4:12

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The recent unrest in Oakland California is not a response to merely an episode or an isolated event or problem. It is a response to an ongoing systemic social and cultural crisis. It is a national problem firmly rooted in America’s epic struggle with its institutionalized racism. The system as it functions is a reflection of an institutional response to self-generated white fears and self fulfilling prophecies. Much of White America fears crime but their response is to institutionalize barbaric social policies and practices that guarantee the creation and perpetuation of circumstances that deepen and justify presumptions of racial purity and supremacy they feel bound to protect “by any means necessary.” The very policies (unwritten but far more concrete in practice then the so-called “rule of law”) that are supposed to solve, minimize or contain the “crime problem” undermine the credibility of the system that selectively applies standards. To call it a double “standard” is to give what is applied to African Americans and millions of Latin Americans a dignity that it just doesn’t deserve. On the spot executions for the crime of just being is no standard at all. Is it a wonder at all that calls for and cries of peace are looked upon with cynical suspicion and suspect of the worse hypocrisy?

If the Church is to move into the lives of people with health and healing we must reclaim the moral authority of Paxion by condemning state monopolized and selectively employed violence with as much if not more vigor and outrage then the violence we see in the streets. Police must not be given a pass but to the contrary; they must be held to even a higher standard. If they do not uphold the law by letter and spirit, then the system faces a profound credibility crisis. It then breeds hopelessness, fear and systemic intimidation in huge swaths of the American public who face life threatening realities both within their communities and from the very people bound and sworn by law to protect them. We do not have drafted police forces. We have people who voluntarily choose to don a badge and a gun in the interest, supposedly, of preserving an orderly society. But, “who is left to judge man, when the judge himself is drawn before the bar?”

The preaching of Paxion as the embodiment of the Gospel demands that the church advocate the eradication of systemic violence, institutional brutalization in the criminal justice system, the devaluation through cultural stigmatization of huge portions of the population and an excessively punitive predisposition and criminal justice policy seemingly intent on criminalizing as many Americans as possible; especially African Americans, Latinos and other minorities. The mean spirited nature of self-righteous disregard of the criminalized and disenfranchised is a complete and total violation of the inherent value of each individual life that is both an implicit and explicit article of faith of both the Gospel of Jesus the Christ and Democracy. The downward spiral of our commitment to the spirit of Christ and our democratic ideals will return on the larger American public like a boomerang of Divine justice for its consistent and smug neglect. “No lie that you can speak or act but after longer or shorter circulation, will come like a bill drawn on nature’s reality and be presented to you for payment with the answer, ‘no effects’.”

Let the people of peace rally. Let the Church of God rally and win back the moral ground we’ve lost during this orgy of militarism, materialism, moral and social neglect. Let us heed the call of God amplified by current circumstance. “Sinners please don’t let this harvest pass.”

A Friend of the Crucified,

Dr. Matthew V. Johnson, ECAPC National Director

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