Carol BlythePeace & Justice
Clear Voice Network
– “In a time when historic Baptist principles, freedoms and tradition need a clear voice. . . ”
Those words from our Covenant define who we are as Alliance of Baptists. For many advocate groups, having progressive Baptists join in their efforts is encouraging. You now have an opportunity to participate more fully in being a “clear voice.” We are setting up an email rapid response network through Alliance members and friends.
This Clear Voice Network will be used for targeted and occasional requests for you to communicate with your Members of Congress or Senators, or your own state legislators. We promise to pass on to you only a few of the many requests that come to the Alliance from various advocacy groups that share our passion for: “justice with and for those who are oppressed; care for the earth; and work for peace” to quote from our covenant. The few that we pass on will reflect either core principles of the Alliance or stem from resolutions or other statements we have passed or supported.
If you are interested in participating, please sign up by emailing: peaceandjustice@allianceofbaptists.org.
Economic Justice
COMMUNITY INVESTING –
At the Convocation this year (2008), the membership passed unanimously a resolution in support of community investing. We urged our board of directors, our churches and our membership to practice “community investing” as a form of Christian discipleship by depositing or investing savings into financial institutions that focus on serving those on the margin, herein the US and abroad. Specifically, we recommended that a minimum of 10% of discretionary capital (savings, endowments, emergency funds, etc) be placed in community investments.
At a workshop on Community Investing, Ken Sehested shared a list of options for investing in communities. Download Ken's list.
If you would like further information, please contact Ken Sehested at ken@circleofmercy.org
You can also do more research on the broader topic of socially-responsible investing at this website: http://www.socialinvest.org/.
If your church, or other organization that you are affiliated with, pursues a community investing effort, please let us know.
GOOD COFFEE FOR A GOOD CAUSE
The Alliance of Baptists has started an informal partnership with Equal Exchange through the United Church of Christ coffee project. Equal Exchange is a democratically organized worker-owned cooperative that pioneered a new model of trade built upon fairness and stronger relationships with farmers and consumers. When you purchase Equal Exchange coffee, tea, chocolate an other projects, you join a network that enables farmers around the world to stay on their land, support their families, plan for the future and care for the environment.
The Alliance of Baptists are piggy-backing on the UCC Coffee project, a partnership of the UCC Justice and Witness Ministries and Equal Exchange. You can start a coffee project at your church, or order products individually.
To order coffee and other fair trade products at www.euqalexchange.com/ucc.
If you would like more information to help your church start a fair trade coffee project, we have information packets in the Alliance Office. Please contact Stan Hastey.
LET JUSTICE ROLL
We have 20 copies of the curriculum, “A Just Minimum Wage: Good for Workers, Business and Our Future” produced by the Let Justice Roll Living Wage Campaign, a justice project of the National Council of Churches. Let Justice Roll provided 50 copies of this curriculum to the Alliance of Baptists for free! We shared 30 copies with folks at the Convocation, but we would be happy to share the rest with interested Alliance churches or members.
In the introduction, James Forbes, Jr., writes that poverty is a weapon of mass destruction in our midst. But he goes on to point out that poverty is a weapon of mass destruction we can eliminate. He writes that this curriculum, “A Just Minimum Wage” reveals truths about poverty and work that could actually set us free from ignorance or inertia. This curriculum is a good starting place to understand what is needed to guarantee our working people a living wage.
If you are interested in using this curriculum in your church, contact Stan Hastey.
Ecological Justice
10 STEP PROGRAM
The Peace & Justice Committee has designed a brochure with a 10 Step Program Toward a Greener Earth. This brochure includes 10 Steps Toward Creating a Greener Meeting Space, 10 Steps Toward Creating a Greener Community (Church), and 10 Steps Toward Creating a Greener Person.
Download the brochure as a PDF file.
Re-Useable Nalgeen Bottles and Coffee Mugs
Go Green and show your theological inclinations, too!
All attendees at the New Orleans Convocation received a re-useable Nalgeen bottle or travel coffee mug. You can order one, too! Call the Alliance office or email
shastey@allianceofbaptists.org.
Racial Justice
Re-creating Communities and Crying out for Justice: The Work of Churches Supporting Churches in the (new) New Orleans
At the New Orleans Convocation, LeDayne McLeese Polaski, of the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America, led a discussion of a panel consisting of three pastors and one lay leader from four African-American churches that had been devastated in Hurricane Katrina. Each panelist spoke about their own survival story, then about the story of their church. The churches that did not completely lose their buildings still suffered serious damage, and also serious loss of membership. Members either were killed in the storm, or have been spread around the country. The pastors have to travel to support their members in Houston, Memphis, and many other cities.
LeDayne also shared information about “Churches Helping Churches”, an effort to support this rebuilding of these churches. Churches Supporting Churches (CSC), a working group initiated by six denominations and three ecumenical movements and supported by the National (US) Council of Churches, is working to recreate a city, a network of communities, from the ground up. CSC has identified twelve devastated neighborhoods of New Orleans and has committed to restart, repair, and rebuild three churches in each. The churches, all of which have a history of commitment to community development, are serving (even as they re-establish themselves) as anchors for the re-creation of all that makes community life possible. These congregations and their pastors are working to replace the structures and the support systems that will make it possible for more and more of the citizens of New Orleans to return home. The vision is to find 10 partner churches for every church that is trying to rebuild. Besides the obvious need for financial support, sometimes the needs are for spiritual support, encouragement, and even organizational help.
If your church would like to participate in the rebuilding of New Orleans in this way, please contact LeDayne at: ledayne@bpfna.org
You can learn more about the Churches Supporting Churches program at: http://www.bpfna.org/csc
Peace
The Alliance of Baptists 2008 budget includes monetary support for the 2009 Global Baptist Peace Conference, February 9-14, 2009 in Villa Mondo Migliore, Castelgrandolfo, Italy. Ken Sehested is our representative on the planning committee.
This is the fourth Global Baptists Peace Conference which will bring together Baptists from around the globe who are active in nonviolent struggles for justice and peace-making ventures.
It will consist of training seminars (conflict transformation, restorative justice, humanitarian assistance in conflict, theology of peace, non-violent struggle), workshops, plenary speakers (Anna May Say Pa of Burma and Gus Parajon of Nicaragua), storytellers from Zimbabwe (C.H.Chiromo), Angola (Joao Matwawana), Morocco (Karen Thomas Smith), Republic of Georgia (Malkhaz Songulashvili), Lebanon (Martin Accad), UK (Norman Kember)), preachers (Anna Maffei of Italy; Ken Sehested), and a cloud of witnesses from around the globe. Additional information and registration forms are found on the conference website: www.globalbaptistpeace.org