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Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America
Basic History
The Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America began at a March 1984 meeting at Deer Park Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky by members of the American Baptist Peace Fellowship (founded in 1940) and staff and readers of the Baptist Peacemaker (published from 1980 to 1990 by Southern Baptists in Louisville). They are an inter-Baptist network of individuals and ad hoc peace groups at the congregational and regional level. One of their key purposes is to locate and link together Baptists from the various conventions throughout North America.
Basic Beliefs
Baptist Peace Fellowship is about revival - revival in the churches of the habit of following Jesus, being implicated in his mission (maybe even his crucifixion) and thereby discovering our lives with a fullness not known before. They are about losing their lives for the sake of Jesus and the reign he came to announce, thereby discovering the joy which he promised to leave when he left.
Understanding violence to be the opposite of shalom- not just war making, but also child abuse, hunger, civil and human rights abuses is a belief shared at BPFNA. They affirm that greed - economic injustice and exploitation - provides the fertile soil from which war springs. The purpose of the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America is to unite and enable Baptist Christians to make peace in a warring world. Their goals are to educate, inspire and mobilize Baptists for greater involvement in justice and peace concerns at local, regional, national and international levels.
Basic Facts
BPFNA now has a board of directors with members affiliated with 12 different Baptist conventions and five racial/ethnic groups. They are not attached to or subsidized by any Baptist convention or other body, although they have structured forms of accountability to many of them and receive limited support from several of them. BPFNA currently had over 50 partner congregations, with a list that is still growing.
| Q U I C K F A C T S |
Leadership
President - Lindsay Penn-Matheson
Vice-President - Paul Hayes
Secretary - Paul Dekar |
Location
Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America
4800 Wedgewood Drive
Charlotte, NC 28210
Phone (704) 521-6051
Fax (704) 521-6053 | | |
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Web Address:
www.bpfna.org
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