Related Research Articles
The War Resisters League (WRL) is the oldest secular pacifist organization in the United States.
The Fellowship of Reconciliation is the name used by a number of religious nonviolent organizations, particularly in English-speaking countries. They are linked by affiliation to the International Fellowship of Reconciliation (IFOR).
Peace churches are Christian churches, groups or communities advocating Christian pacifism or Biblical nonresistance. The term historic peace churches refers specifically only to three church groups among pacifist churches—Church of the Brethren, including all daughter churches such as the Old German Baptist Brethren, Old Brethren, and Dunkard Brethren as well as Hutterian Brethren, Old Order River Brethren and Bruderhof; Religious Society of Friends (Quakers); and Mennonites, including the Amish, Beachy Amish, Old Order Mennonite, and Conservative Mennonites. This phrase has been used since the first conference of the peace churches in Kansas in 1935.
The International Fellowship of Reconciliation (IFOR) is a non-governmental organization founded in 1914 in response to the horrors of war in Europe. Today IFOR counts 71 branches, groups and affiliates in 48 countries on all continents. IFOR members promote nonviolence, human rights and reconciliation through public education efforts, training programs and campaigns. The IFOR International Secretariat in Utrecht, Netherlands facilitates communication among IFOR members, links branches to capacity building resources, provides training in gender-sensitive nonviolence through the Women Peacemakers Program, and helps coordinate international campaigns, delegations and urgent actions. IFOR has ECOSOC status at the United Nations.
The Neo-charismaticmovement is a movement within evangelical Protestant Christianity that is composed of a diverse range of independent churches and organizations that emphasize the post-Biblical availability of gifts of the Holy Spirit, such as speaking in tongues and faith healing. The Neo-charismatic movement is considered to be the "third wave" of the Charismatic Christian tradition which began with Pentecostalism, and was furthered by the Charismatic movement. As a result of the growth of postdenominational and independent charismatic groups, Neo-charismatics are now believed to be more numerous than the first and second wave categories. As of 2002, some 19,000 denominations or groups, with approximately 295 million individual adherents, were identified as Neo-charismatic.
Renewal is the collective term for Charismatic, pentecostal and neo-charismatic churches.
John Dear is an American Catholic priest, Christian pacifist, vegetarianism advocate, author and lecturer, and a former member of the Society of Jesus. He has been arrested over 75 times in acts of nonviolent civil disobedience against war, injustice and nuclear weapons as part of his "consistent ethic of nonviolence". Dear has been nominated several times for the Nobel Peace Prize, in January 2008 by Archbishop Desmond Tutu and most recently with Leo Rebello for the 2015 award.
Glen Harold Stassen was an American ethicist and Baptist theologian. He was known for his work on theological ethics, political philosophy, and social justice and for developing the Just Peacemaking Theory regarding the comparative ethics of war and peace. Stassen died in Pasadena, California at the age of 78. He was the son of former Minnesota governor Harold Stassen.
Hildegard Goss-Mayr is an Austrian nonviolent activist and Christian theologian.
Bernard Lafayette, Jr. is an American civil rights activist and organizer, who was a leader in the Civil Rights Movement. He played a leading role in early organizing of the Selma Voting Rights Movement; was a member of the Nashville Student Movement; and worked closely throughout the 1960s movements with groups such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and the American Friends Service Committee.
The Jewish Peace Fellowship is a nonprofit, nondenominational organization set up to provide a Jewish voice in the peace movement. The organization was founded in 1941 in order to support Jewish conscientious objectors who sought exemption from combatant military service. The JPF is currently headquartered in Nyack, New York.
The New International Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements is a comprehensive reference work on charismatic Christianity. It is edited primarily by Stanley M. Burgess. Published in 2002, it is the "revised and expanded edition" of the 1988 Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements. Both editions have received positive reviews from scholars. The book has won several awards. Both editions are published by Zondervan.
Michael N. Nagler is an American academic, nonviolence educator, mentor, meditator, and peace activist.
The Swiss Pentecostal Mission is the largest Pentecostal Christian denomination in Switzerland. Officially known in English as the Pentecostal Assemblies of Switzerland, it is the Swiss branch of the Assemblies of God, the largest Pentecostal denomination in the world. In 2013, the denomination had 10,000 adherents in 66 churches, and it operated a conference center in Emmetten.
Ched Myers is an American theologian specializing in biblical studies and political theology.
Charles Coates "Charlie" Walker was an American Quaker activist and trainer for nonviolent direct action in both the civil rights and peace movements. He worked throughout his life to bring segregation, racial injustice, nuclear and biological weapons, and war to public awareness. He used Gandhian methods of nonviolence, writing training materials and organizing marches, vigils, protest demonstrations, conferences and campaigns in different parts of the world.
United States Fellowship of Reconciliation was founded in 1915 by sixty-eight pacifists, including A. J. Muste, Jane Addams and Bishop Paul Jones, and claims to be the "largest, oldest interfaith peace and justice organization in the United States." Norman Thomas, at first skeptical of its program, joined in 1916 and would become the group's president. Its programs and projects involve domestic as well as international issues, and generally emphasize nonviolent alternatives to conflict and the rights of conscience. Unlike the U.K. movements, it is an interfaith body, though its historic roots are in Christianity.
Rabbi Hanan Schlesinger, along with Ali Abu Awwad and Shaul Judelman, cofounded Roots/Shorashim/Judur, a joint Palestinian-Israeli grassroots peacemaking initiative dedicated to understanding nonviolence and transformation, where he currently remains director of international relations. An Orthodox rabbi, he also serves as the Executive Director and Community Rabbinic Scholar for the Jewish Studies Initiative of North Texas and as coordinator for Faiths in Conversation, a framework for Muslim-Jewish-Christian interfaith dialogue which he found in 2012. A biography regarding his speaking engagements writes, “In these two capacities, he (Schlesinger) teaches adult education classes on Judaism and spearheads interfaith projects throughout the greater Dallas area. He is also a member of the Rabbinical Council of America and the International Rabbinic Fellowship, as well as Beit Hillel. He is a Rabbis Without Borders Fellow, and was honored in 2013 and again in 2014 as the Memnosyne Institute Interfaith Scholar.
Charismatic Christianity is a form of Christianity that emphasizes the work of the Holy Spirit, spiritual gifts, and modern-day miracles as an everyday part of a believer's life. Practitioners are often called Charismatic Christians or Renewalists. Although there is considerable overlap, Charismatic Christianity is often categorized into three separate groups: Pentecostalism, the Charismatic movement and Neo-charismatic movement. The movements are distinguished from Pentecostalism by not making the act of speaking in tongues necessary for evidence of Spirit baptism, giving prominence to a diversity of spiritual gifts. According to the Pew Research Center, Pentecostals and Charismatic Christians numbered over 584 million or a quarter of the world's 2 billion Christians in 2011.
References
- Paul Alexander, Peace to War: Shifting Allegiances in the Assemblies of God. Foreword by Glen Stassen. C. Henry Smith Series, vol. 9. Telford, PA: Cascadia Publishing/Herald Press, 2009.
- Martin Mittelstadt, "Pentecostal Charismatic Peace Fellowship", Stanley Burgess and Michael Palmer, eds. Encyclopedia of Religion and Social Justice. New York, NY: Routledge, 2008.
- Matthew T. Lee, Margaret Poloma, and Stephen Post, The Heart of Religion. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2012.
