Adventist Peace Fellowship Launches New Website and Initiatives

The Adventist Peace Fellowship, a lay-organized 501c3 nonprofit organization dedicated to interfaith work for peace and social justice, has re-launched its website with expanded initiatives, tools, and resources.

“We hope the new website might serve as a platform for Adventists around the world who care about peace and justice issues to share their work and to build partnerships with others,” says Adventist Peace Fellowship director Ron Osborn.

The APF was founded in 2001 with a focus on questions of war and peace in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11.  The organization’s work today encompasses peacemaking in the broadest and most holistic sense of the word, including concern for economic justice, human rights, freedom of conscience, and care for the environment.

Some well-known and outspoken Adventist voices (many familiar to Spectrum readers) comprise the Fellowship’s advisory board.

With the launch of the new website, the APF introduces steps by which college and university students can organize their own APF Chapters and receive APF grants. 

“Students at Andrews University are already hard at work organizing the first APF student chapter,” Osborn says. “We hope that other Adventist colleges and universities follow Andrews’ lead.  We stand prepared to support students with creativity, vision, and a passion for peacemaking in every way we can as an organization.”

However, the APF is by no means simply aimed at young Adventists, according to Osborn.  Small groups of any kind can form APF chapters.  “We are also encouraging Adventist congregations to make peace and justice work a central, unmistakable, and public part of their ministry by becoming part of an Adventist Peace Church network.”  The website includes a certification process for congregations to become listed as official Adventist Peace Churches.

The new site also features profiles of more than 60 Adventists or friends of Adventists who have made important contributions to public life through their activism, advocacy, scholarship, and service for peace and social justice.

A bibliography that is “a primer in Adventist social ethics” includes links to articles listed by topic, including the Iraq War and the war on terror, anti-imperialism and conscientious objection, Project Whitecoat and the Vietnam War, and church-state relations. Pieces included are from both popular and scholarly publications, and tell stories of both Adventist moral courage and moral failure. There is lots of reading here (including many Spectrum articles).

There is also a list of books that were either written by or about Seventh-day Adventists and address issues of peace and social justice, and a list of films that “reflect diverse Adventist voices and visions of what it means to be peacemakers in the world today.”

Perhaps even more interesting is a list of statements and resolutions concerning questions of war and peace, human rights and social justice issued by elected officials of the Adventist church over the history of the church.

And finally, there is a list of campaigns, organized by issue, with information on how people can get involved and take action.

“We hope that the site helps individuals, congregations, and communities rediscover some vital but often forgotten or marginalized parts of the Adventist tradition,” Osborn says.