The tragic conflicts in such places as Bosnia, the Middle East, Rwanda, Northern Ireland, and Sri Lanka, as well as inter-ethnic conflict in the United States, reveal the deep potential for hatred and violence in humankind. These conflicts pose a great challenge to the Christian church as the mediator of Jesus' gospel of love and reconciliation in the world, as well as to the wider religious community. The church's pain is only made greater by the fact that so many of these violent conflicts pit one religious group against another-Protestant against Catholic; Muslim against Jew; Hindu against Buddhist; or Orthodox, Catholic, and Muslim against one another.
The rising tide of violence in the world threatens to engulf communities, nations, and world civilizations. As we approach the year of our Lord 2000, it is time for the church to become proactive in resolving conflict and developing alternatives to violence. Specifically:
We call upon the General Board of Global Ministries to enter into discussions with Christian Peacemakers, a group which provides a Christian presence in situations of international, interreligious, and inter-ethnic conflict, to explore the possibility of including United Methodists on the teams which are sent to areas of conflict.
We call upon the General Board of Global Ministries to incorporate the principles of non-violent conflict resolution and interethnic and interreligious dialogue in the Shalom Zone Program.
We call upon the General Board of Church and Society, together with the General Commission on Religion and Race, to hold a series of interreligious dialogues to develop new approaches to mutual understanding, respect, and cooperation, and to develop, for use in local church and community settings, guidelines on how to set up local dialogues and how to develop and implement alternatives to violence.
We call upon our seminaries and United Methodist-related colleges and universities to offer courses on alternatives to violence and to sponsor local community initiatives to diffuse ethnic and religious conflict. We also call on our seminaries to encourage the study of the theological roots of violence and of Jesus' teachings on non-resistance and resisting evil.
We call upon the U.S. government, working with the United Nations, to give leadership in retraining the military for the tasks of peacemaking, peacekeeping, reconstruction, and rehabilitation. This means reallocating funds from building weapons to building communities, from teaching to kill to teaching to protect life. Modest beginnings in such an effort can be seen in community policing initiatives in many of our cities, in the peacekeeping force in Bosnia, and in the nonviolent transition to democracy in South Africa.
General Conference Webmaster: Susan Brumbaugh
PETS Creator: John Brawn
Petition Text: 22489-GM-NonDis-O
1996 United Methodist General Conference