The Adventist Peace Fellowship

Peacemaking has followed me back from California to my hometown in the South. Or maybe I’ve started noticing it now that I’ve been somewhere else. Back at the beginning of the semester signs started appearing on the walls of the building where I work about something called the Adventist Peace Fellowship.

Going to Adventist church schools as a child, I learned that it wasn’t a good idea to join the military because they might require you to work on Sabbath – something Adventists don’t do. Plus you might also have to “bear arms” in the military. And Adventists definitely don’t do that either. However there are Adventists who are also politically conservative. At least in my area. They often support the military endeavors of the country whether or not they would be willing to do the killing themselves. So seeing signs up about something called the Adventist Peace Fellowship made me curious. Especially in my area. I went to the meeting.

It turns out that some of the professors and students at my school are interested in Christian peacemaking and want to get together with like-minded individuals. So we’ve formed the first local chapter of the fellowship at my school. APF has largely been an online group which organizes through e-mails and websites. Consequently, my school’s group will have to figure out what exactly a local chapter of the APF does.

I’m excited about the APF. I think there’s a lot of potential for good in something like this. I have two hopes for the group - first, that it won’t just be an academic club. That it will actually invite members from the community to get involved and contribute as well as college students and teachers. I also hope that even though the issues have the potential to be divisive, the APF will be able to promote unity within my church even as it speaks truth.