II. A Heritage of Struggle for Justice and Peace

Since our beginnings in the 17th Century, a large number of Baptists have been peacemakers. Our earliest heritage as English Puritan-Separatists who were taught to be more Christ-centered by Dutch Anabaptists included a strong stream of pacifists and an even greater number of "near-pacifist" peacemakers.

Some of the strongest Christian voices for nonviolence and peacemaking are also among the most important shapers of Baptist life and thought, including Walter Rauschenbusch, Muriel Lester, Clarence Jordan, Howard Thurman, and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Peacemaking and nonviolence are also a part of the history of our own congregation: In the 1930s, we were one of the mission churches supervised by Baptist pacifist Clarence Jordan and among our former pastors is Henlee Barnette, a peacemaking Christian ethicist and an activist against the Vietnam War. More recently, we became a covenant congregation with the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America and our members, sometimes as individuals and sometimes as a congregation, have been involved in many nonviolent movements for peace and justice.
Further, our church covenant already commits us to "promote peace and justice in all life circumstances."

Therefore, in identifying ourselves as a congregation of peace, we declare no new teaching, but name explicitly an identity we already possess. Our history and present life already demonstrate our developing convictions concerning violence, war, nonviolence and active peacemaking. In this declaration, we seek to name those convictions more concretely so that all will be clear about our stand.