"We're here to protest violence. We're here to hold up God, " said the Rev. Dr. Joe Phelps at vigil in Louisville, KY this past Sunday. The vigil was held in honor of 37-year old Tyrone Cheatham one week after he was fatally stabbed to death in his own neighborhood. "Until people stop killing each other we are not going to quit saying these words and holding out hope for a different path," Rev. Phelps continued. Joe Phelps is the pastor of Highland Baptist Church in Louisville, KY. Highland is a very centrist church--by no means radical. Most of its members would consider themselves evangelicals and it has always been led by evangelical pastors who, like Phelps himself, are thoroughly orthodox in theology. It's liturgy may be slightly more "high church" than the average Baptist congregation and its social involvement slightly left of center. (I.e., more of its members vote Democrat than Republican and a few notable members have strongly progressive stands on social justice and peacemaking, but the church as a whole could never be categorized as politically radical.) Rev. Dr. Phelps is a convinced pacifist who has contributed a few articles to Every Church a Peace Church, but he would be quick to say that pacifism is a minority position in the congregation--although a growing minority, perhaps. For that reason, Highland Baptist Church contributes to the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America, and many of its members are individual members of BPFNA, but Highland has never joined as a partner congregation of the Peace Fellowship. Yet, Joe Phelps has been steadily moving his congregation toward greater work for social justice and especially has been pushing them to take the lead in addressing violence in several dimensions. For a year, Highland Baptist Church placed crosses in its front lawn with the names of people murdered in Central America by graduates of the U.S. "School of the Americas" in Ft. Benning, GA. Then people in the congregation began to ask about victims of murder locally. Rev. Phelps was quick to notice that the police were more active in solving murders in white, middle class, neighborhoods than in poor and/or minority neighborhoods. (In addition to a large African-American population, Louisville has a large and growing Hispanic/Latino community, a growing Asian population, especially from Vietnam, Arab and Muslim populations--including those which began as refugees from many places.) He began to join forces with African-American pastors--and later with rabbis from Louisville's diverse Jewish community--to ask what could be done to address the growing violence in the city. As violent crime was dropping in major cities across the U.S., beginning in the late '90s, it was on the rise in mid-size cities in the South and Midwest like Louisville. So, together with other religious leaders, Rev. Phelps has formed "No Murders Metro," a civic organization to protest the murder rate, draw attention to the religious message of nonviolence, and to make suggestions to the city leaders on how to reduce the violent crime rate. " Even those that commit violence, they're hungry for something. They're looking for love in all the wrong places, looking for help in all the wrong places," said Rev. Clay Calloway, Assoc. Pastor of St. Stephen Baptist Church (an African-American congregation), at Sunday's vigil. Other voices at the vigil called for the city to pump more money into education and job creation, as well as programs to combat drugs and youth violence. The members of No Murders Metro believe the city has spent too much money on expensive projects to attract tourists and have neglected investment in the kinds of social justice that reduces crime by reducing the hopelessness and nihilism of poor youth. Rev. Phelps also sees the connection between the violence the U.S. government commits abroad and the way that youth increasingly turn to violence to solve problems. Our actions speak louder than words and this society cannot teach children and youth to solve problems nonviolently when it spends billions on violent "solutions" to terrorism and other perceived threats. What can churches in your area, even your own church, even YOU, do about violence and crime in your local context? Michael L. Westmoreland-White
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