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A UMNS Report
By Linda Bloom*

1:00 P.M. EST May 11, 2011

Jan Love served as chairwoman of the WCC’s Decade to Overcome Violence for five years. A UMNS 2006 file photo by Linda Bloom.
View in Photo Gallery

Back in the early 1990s, church people active in social-justice issues began to realize that the promise for peace arising from the end of the Cold War had not been fulfilled.

Even worse, remembers Jan Love, a United Methodist then active in the World Council of Churches, was the growing concern “that religion would be used as a means to incite more violence and create more tension between ethnic groups and across nations.”

The WCC Central Committee grappled with how to address such concerns. Eventually, the committee called for a “Decade to Overcome Violence” as a way to create a “sustained focus” on efforts for peace, said Love, who served as chairwoman for five years after the decade-long campaign launch in 2001.

The decade itself will culminate with the May 17-25 International Ecumenical Peace Convocation in Kingston, Jamaica, which Love, dean of Candler School of Theology in Atlanta, and a number of other United Methodists will attend.

But the work is far from over, as David Wildman, who oversees human rights and racial justice issues for the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries, can attest.

“With many governments still relying on military might to try and solve problems, it’s more important than ever for followers of the Prince of Peace to meet and share ways we as the church can know and live out ‘the things that make for peace’ in our day,” he wrote in a May 10 email message from Kabul, Afghanistan, one of the regions where war continues today.

“Let us pray that the time in Jamaica will bring renewed commitment and shared actions to putting an end to war and the massive military spending that destroys lives and communities and wastes so many of God's resources,” he added.

Observing May 22 as ‘Peace Sunday’

More than 1,000 people from around the world are expected to attend the peace convocation at the Mona campus of the University of West Indies. The event is a collaborative effort of the Jamaica Council of Churches, Caribbean Conference of Churches, and local churches and community groups.

The gathering will celebrate the achievements of the Decade to Overcome Violence and encourage individuals and churches to renew their commitment to nonviolence, peace and justice.

Events include the planting of peace trees, a peace concert in Kingston and the celebration of May 22 as Peace Sunday. Churches around the world can join in prayers, special events and worship services including the use of a Caribbean prayer for peace, which has been translated into more than 20 languages.

Jorge Lockward (center) leads a rehearsal before a morning service at the 2006 assembly along with the Rev. Tercio Junker (left) and the Rev. Michael Hawn (right). A 2006 UMNS file photo
by Linda Bloom. View in Photo Gallery

The Rev. Stephen J. Sidorak Jr., top executive of the United Methodist Commission on Christian Unity and Interreligious Concerns and a convocation participant, encouraged local churches to both celebrate Peace Sunday “and to consider seriously a systematic study of the paper the International Ecumenical Peace Convocation will issue — ‘An Ecumenical Call to Just Peace.’”

“Inspired by the example of Jesus of Nazareth,” the document’s purpose, as stated in its preamble, is to make Christians aware of the promise of peace as a core value of all religions. A related resource document, the Just Peace Companion offers biblical, theological and ethical considerations.

An Ecumenical Call to Just Peace presents “another perspective” on peace, according to Mark Harrison, a convocation participant and director of the peace with justice program for the United Methodist Board of Church and Society. “It reengages us to look at peace as more than just the absence of war,” he explained.

Issues related to just peace, for example, are not just about disputes among nations but also can filter down to what is happening in a local community, he pointed out.

The themes of the convocation — Peace in the Community, Peace with the Earth, Peace in the Marketplace and Peace among the Peoples — are taken from the document. One theme will be developed each day, beginning with related prayer and Bible study.

“A church that prays for peace, serves its community, uses money ethically, cares for the environment and cultivates good relations with others can become an instrument for peace,” the document states. “Furthermore, when churches work in a united way for peace, their witness becomes more credible.”

Setting the tone for prayer

Times of prayer at the peace convocation will reflect “the voices of people around the world,” particularly local voices, says the Rev. Susan Henry-Crowe, a United Methodist and dean of the chapel and religious life at Emory University in Atlanta.

“We really have tried to be proactive in setting a tone — deepening the understanding of things that make for peace,” said Henry-Crowe, part of the convocation’s planning committee. On Sunday, participants will worship with local congregations, and the convocation’s closing prayer service will take place on the beach.

Jorge Lockward, an executive with the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries, will help lead worship and song in the plenary sessions exploring the themes. He thinks the peace convocation can provide “hope” because it is listening to the voices of those who usually “are the recipients of the violence.”

Lockward will be joined in Kingston by Andrew Donaldson of Toronto, who was commissioned in January as a missionary for the Board of Global Ministries. Donaldson — a musician, worship leader and past president of the Hymn Society in the United States and Canada — will move to Geneva in June to serve as a WCC consultant in the area of worship and spirituality.

Among the other United Methodists participating in the International Ecumenical Peace Convocation are the Rev. Liberato Bautista, who heads Church and Society’s U.N. office; Adrienne Fong, a Church and Society board member; the Rev. Mark Reisinger, peace with justice coordinator for the United Methodist Susquehanna Annual (regional) Conference; and Tom Porter, co-executive director of JUSTPEACE, the denomination’s center for mediation and conflict transformation.

Also attending are two representatives from the denomination’s Philippines Central Conference — Jonathan Ulanday, a Commission on Christian Unity and Interreligious Concerns board member, and Gladys Mangiduyos, a deaconess and professor of education at Wesleyan University, Philippines.

No compromise on the call

What makes the International Ecumenical Peace Convocation timely is the fact that peace with justice ministry “is a primary calling” for all of Christ’s disciples — a calling that cannot be compromised by “the penchant for war and the marketability of conflict,” Bautista said.

Participants march for peace in Porto Alegre, Brazil,
during the 2006 WCC ninth assembly. A web-only
photo courtesy of WCC/Paulino Menezea.

The Kingston event offers an opportunity for networking among peace builders on how to improve advocacy for peace with justice, he said, making peace “a primary proposition,” not an alternate one.

“Peace advocacy anywhere will be a lasting solidarity everywhere, especially in the difficult places around the world where witness to God’s peace with justice means risking life and limbs,” Bautista said. “That is why witness to peace with justice is equally, and even importantly, a witness to human rights and dignity.”

When she spoke about the impact of the Decade to Overcome Violence during the WCC’s ninth assembly in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in 2006, Love said the observance was “shifting the terms of debate over issues related to war and peace.”

Now, at the peace convocation, people from very different religious traditions can “challenge each other” about those issues.

“It’s an opportunity for the decade to have a powerful defining moment,” she said.

*Bloom is a United Methodist News Service multimedia reporter based in New York. Follow her at http://twitter.com/umcscribe.

News media contact: Linda Bloom, New York, (646) 369-3759 or newsdesk@umcom.org.