Presbyterian Peace Fellowship announces a new vision statement

The 80-year-old parachurch organization seeks to ‘disrupt and transform the culture of domination’

from Presbyterian Peace Fellowship | Special to Presbyterian News Service

LOUISVILLE — Presbyterian Peace Fellowship, a parachurch organization begun during the 1940s to provide support to conscientious objectors during World War II, has announced a new vision statement, according to a news release:

“Relying on God’s grace, the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship imagines 

a world of peace where all God’s creation can thrive. 

In local and global communities, we will use every nonviolent means 

to disrupt and transform the culture of domination that normalizes 

racism, ecocide, militarization, and war.

We build peace through the abolition of structural violence 

and by living into alternatives to violence 

with creativity, intelligence, imagination, and love.”

“The new vision does not override our longstanding commitments to anti-militarism, a fossil free world or the prevention of gun violence,” said the Rev. abby mohaupt, one of the organization’s co-moderators. “Rather, it refocuses how we do that work in words that are particular to this time and place.”

Photo by Sunguk Kim via Unsplash

In a Tuesday news release, the organization noted “the rising threats of fascism and right-wing extremism across the globe, fueled in part by Christian nationalism, climate chaos and dangerous war threatening nuclear disaster and exacerbating the energy crisis” as a few of the realities shaping how PPF organizes itself.

“We will not stand by while this culture of structural violence escalates,” said the Rev. David Ensign, PPF’s interim executive director, “and we feel really excited about the ways this new vision coupled with new leadership as we navigate staff transition will create powerful new opportunities for us to take action together.”

The legacy of PPF’s 80-year history “is marked by significant change in direction at regular intervals in order to stay true to an overarching commitment to stand against violence and war and to focus on the things that make for peace,” PPF said in its news release. “Over the years there has been a commitment to the abolition of war and nuclear weapons, gun violence, fossil fuels and the structural violence that fuels migration across the globe.”

The Rev. Lucy Waechter Webb, PPF’s manager of communications and digital organizing, said that “the framework of abolition compels us to build up a new world as we simultaneously work to dismantle the structures of violence that cause so much harm.”

Learn more about Presbyterian Peace Fellowship here. Follow PPF on Twitter here.