Progressive National Baptist Convention Calls For Peace

The Progressive National Baptist Convention recently concluded its annual meeting held this year in Louisville, Kentucky.  Unfortunately, there was little coverage of this gathering of nearly 5,000 Progressive Baptists.

Peter Smith of the Louisville Courier-Journal did cover the event.  Check out his article titled A Baptist ‘peace convention’

Here’s a snippet:

The term “peace church,” usually brings to mind such pacifist groups as Quakers and Mennonites.  But a large black Baptist convention proudly wears that label in its own way, rooted in its traditions of non-violent civil disobedience.

The Progressive National Baptist Convention on Friday wrapped up its weeklong annual session — held in Louisville for the first time since 2000 — by announcing a brace of resolutions calling for, among other things, a halt to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“We are a peace church. We are a peace convention,” said the Rev T. DeWitt Smith Jr., president of the convention, at a press conference at the Kentucky International Convention Center. “We believe in the concept, the idea, the principle, the fact that wars are unjust and the church should take the stand to say study war no more,” he said, echoing the words of the traditional African-American spiritual, “Down by the Riverside.”

While President Barack Obama has called for an end to the Iraq War, he has committed to expanding U.S. troop commitments in Afghanistan.  “We are not against the president trying to do what he can to stem terrorism, but we also know that we have a lot of terror going on in our own land,” said Smith, a Decatur, Ga., pastor.  Other resolutions passed by the convention called for such far-reaching goals as universal health care — although the resolution didn’t spell out a specific plan — as well as increasing funding to combat HIV and AIDS; a right to quality education for all; prison reform and efforts to combat poverty and racism.

“America cannot be the moral policeman of the world,” Smith said. “We have too much in our own back yard that needs cleaning up.”  This blend of opposing overseas wars, while calling for massive social reforms, fits the denomination’s heritage, said the Rev. Tyrone S. Pitts, general secretary for the Washington-based denomination.  “We always look at it through the eyes of our founding fathers and mothers,” he said. “Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was one of the few people who stood against the Vietnam War. … To be bearers of peace means we need to be bearers of justice.”

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