Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America
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The Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America, abbreviated BPFNA, is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina. It is an association of Baptist, Christian churches.
Formed in 1984, their mission statement is as follows: "The Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America gathers, equips and mobilizes Baptists to build a culture of peace rooted in justice. We labour with a wonderful array of peacemakers to change the world." [1]
Membership is available to any Baptist church that is interested in the goals of the BPFNA and are willing to provide funding to achieve them. Founding Executive Director, Ken Sehested, advocated an explicitly Baptist peace organization because;
"With some exceptions, progressive movements--those dealing with justice and peace issues--have few entry points into the subculture of Baptist institutions. By and large their voices simply are not heard; or, if heard, not heeded, primarily because the vocabulary and appeals to authority are so different from our traditional language of faith." [2]
There are 73 partner churches in the United States, and 2 in Canada, a very small membership in proportion to the total number of Baptist churches in North America. Its size reflects that the agenda of the body has more in common with the pacifism of the historic peace churches than the views of the majority of Baptists, even those that are otherwise engaged in peace efforts.
BPFNA is a supporting member of Christian Peacemaker Teams and is on CPT's Steering Committee. [3]
The Baptist Peacemaker is a quarterly journal published by the BPFNA.
