Church of the Savior Diaspora Hosts
Peace One-Day Celebration
During the Mid-September Blizzard Weekend

by Bill Price
November 27, 2003

The Summer 2003 Diaspora announced the plans for this step toward world peace: the gathering at The Church of the Savior, sponsored by the national peace networks The New Abolitionists and the Every Church A Peace Church movement, as part of the United Nations annual Peace One Day Celebration. The planned gathering include peace leaders from throughout the nation and peace leaders from the local Church of the Savior Diaspora and storm Isabel arrived just in time to announce the Essence of the Celebration.

In writing this report I keep remembering the mid-June Fiftieth Anniversary Celebration at Dayspring, how Saturday Afternoon - during reminiscences in the large tent near the Pavilion - Gale Quist and other C of S care-givers quickly moved us to the Wellspring Center, just in time to avoid the severe storm with lightning and heavy rain. Then as soon as we all had shelter in the Center, Gordon preached prophetically that in order to faithfully continue our journey, the C of S needed "new Wine Skins."

On Friday September 19th with the storm Isabel certain to come to Washington, we had a decision to make: the Airlines had cancelled flights for two of my first partners in working for world peace - Glen Stassen coming from California and Mary Evelyn Jegen (SND) coming from Cincinnati. The six other guest world peacemakers could come and Glen "authorized" me to share for him the great news that throughout the entire inter-denominational spectrum there is a rapidly growing consensus among Christian Ethics that war must be abolished, and Mary Evelyn agreed to join us in leading the "Time to Break the Silence" event scheduled at Wellspring Center on April 2-4, 2004. (Put it on your calendar!) So we decided to proceed with our plans for Saturday and Sunday.

And through God's Grace the Peace One Day Celebration came off remarkably well. Three-quarters of the local participants - i.e. Those within driving distance - were able to be at the C of S Headquarters on Saturday and/or the Festival Center on Sunday and a special contingent went to the White House ground to pray on Sunday Afternoon! Welcomed on Saturday Morning by joining Stefan Waligur's peace ministry through his amazing repertoire of songs, fed abundantly both days and by Sandra Miller of Potter's House Catering service and Seekers, folded into the Covenant Community Church service - with Allen Holt the liturgist - at the Festival Church - on Sunday, and lead to the White House to pray by Carol Bullard-Bates (of Jubilee Church and the Carol and Kent White House Prayer Ministry, the Spirit of C of S hospitality "made" the Celebration. And yes, the majority of participants were C of S members preparing for Recommitment Sunday 2003 including the wonderful, very explicit peace commitment, ADDED IN 1972, INDEED THE ONLY CHANGE IN THE MEMBERSHIP COMMITMENT SINCE OUR FOUNDING IN 1947!

The guest peace leaders brought decades of experience in working for world peace. Throughout the day they were introduced by Dayspring contingent, who have been/are/and will be hoping, praying, and working for breaking in of a new era for this nation and the world - the promised Dayspring from on High!
• John Stoner - cofounder of New Abolitionists and the New Call to Peacemakers two decades ago, and, propitiously, of the EVERY CHURCH A PEACE CHURCH movement, as we entered the new millennium.
• Jonathan Schell - from New York City - author, teacher, and lecturer whose numerous books started during the Vietnam War. "THE FATE OF THE EARTH" appeared propitiously in 1982, as the New Abolitionists and a million other persons gathered on June 12th in Central Park, NYC thus launching the Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign. As we entered the New Millennium, "THE GIFT OF TIME: The Case For Abolishing Nuclear Weapons" (1998), and most recently "THE UNCONQUERABLE WORLD: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People" (2003) have both alerted and brought hope and direction for Abolitionists of nuclear weapons and other apocalyptic weapons of mass destruction and indeed of all war. (Check his regular column "LETTER FROM GROUND ZERO" in THE NATION magazine.
• Richard Deats, ordained as a Methodist minister and as long-term leader of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, also is a co-founder of the New Abolitionists. His decades of peacemaking has exemplified Every Faith A Peace Faith as he has participated as a biblical pacifist through the suffering servant hood of nonviolent action in a dozen nations throughout the world.
• Michael Westmorland-White, PhD student of Glen Stassen at the Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville, and a continuing partner in Glen's continuing book publications, and a co-founder of ECAPC shard in depth from Glen's widely accepted "Just Peacemaking: Ten Practices for Abolishing War" (Pilgrim Press 1988) which show those links between the Sermon on the Mount and the practices of peacemaking.
• Sis & Jerry Levin, World Peacemakers in the Mid-East, attended the celebration on their way home for short leave from their three-year mission, stationed in Palestine. They shared out of what they are learning and teaching as they seek to follow Christ in what Sis describes as the most oppressed place in the world. Sis brought a 30-minute video documenting the exciting progress with the children at a Bible School in Bethlehem. Jerry Levin, full-time volunteer with the Christian Peacemakers - stationed in Hebron, Palestine - witnessed to the seminal, vital importance of learning to "Live and Teach as Jesus Lived and Taught" by immersing oneself in the System of God's Love revealed in the New Testament, the antidote to the belief that God's power can at times be employed through a security system based on fear. With great hope I pull from my files Jerry's March 25, 2000 Letter enclosing his "Work In Progress Draft: Facing Up to Violence and God's Love: Reflections On the Challenge of 'Love Your Enemies.'"

I believe that the genuine acceptance throughout the C of S Diaspora of the hope shared, obvious in the Spirit present during presentations of these guest peacemakers, and during dialogue with the made possible as groups of a dozen+ each moved from place to place (including a visit to the Gandhi statue just west of the C of S Headquarters, and our shared meals) I believe that this Peace One Day Celebration was clearly a fruit of C of S's 56-year journey.

As I end this report, I return to the back of an early bulletin of C of S, containing the original "MEMBERSHIP COMMITMENT OF THE CHURCH OF THE SAVIOUR", followed by a short statement describing "AN ECUMENICAL CHURCH" which ends with the words "An ecumenical church gives unqualified corporate allegiance to Jesus Christ." And I celebrate yet again that the only change that has been made in our MEMBERSHIP COMMITMENT came through the initiative of George Cresswell - born and raised in the C of S, including a multitude of weekends at Dayspring - who expanded the commitment starting with the words "I will seek to be Christian in all relations…" to the present "Realizing that Jesus taught and exemplified a life of love, we will seek to be loving in all relations with other individuals, classes, races, & nations, seeking to be reconcilers, living in a manner which will end all war personal & public."

And I believe our ongoing partnership with the Every Church A Peace Church organization is clearly a part of the "New Wineskins" Gordon called for at the 50th Anniversary of Dayspring, as urgent as the moving from the Tent to the Wellspring Center that day. I urge you to put April 5, 2004 Weekend at Wellspring on your calendar as an opportunity to underline "A Time to Break the Silence" - especially of the nation's church - which Martin Luther King Jr. preached so clearly at Riverside Church on April 4, 1967 and by his assassination on April 4, 1968.