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August 25, 2008
Annual peacemaking colloquium set for Sept. 15-17
Stony Point event seeks to counter gun violence through gospel values
LOUISVILLE — Ministers, lay leaders and others will gather next month for a conference exploring how gospel values can transform society’s acceptance of gun violence and lead to building a culture of peace.
The 2008 Peacemaking Colloquium “Gun Violence and Gospel Values” will take place Sept. 15-17 at Stony Point Center in New York.
The annual event is sponsored by Stony Point Center, the Presbyterian Peacemaking Program, the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship, the Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy, the Synod of the Northeast Public Policy Advocacy Network, Albany Presbytery and Monmouth Presbytery.
“Our hope for this conference is that the participants will be actors in determining a strategy for how we’re going to encourage the church to take action on the issue of gun violence,” said Rick Ufford-Chase, the newly appointed transitional co-director of Stony Point Center and executive director of the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship.
According to the colloquium’s official registration brochure, firearms were used to kill 30,694 people in the United States in 2005, the most recent year with complete data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The United States is among the leading exporters of small arms and light weapons that fuel violence around the world, the brochure said.
Gun violence “is epidemic across our country and it is an issue that has been largely unaddressed by churches and it now touches everybody,” said Ufford-Chase, who was moderator of the 216th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).
He said the event will not only examine domestic gun violence but international gun violence and the sale of guns and weapons around the world.
Colloquium participants will hear keynote speeches by Dr. Garen Wintemute of the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California at Davis Medical Center, and Thomas Diaz, senior analyst with the Violence Policy Center in Washington, DC.
There will be a panel discussion on “Gun Violence in the U.S. and the World.” The panelists will be Frida Berrigan, senior program associate of the Arms and Security Initiative at the New America Foundation in Washington, DC; Julio Medina, executive director/founder and CEO of Exodus Transitional Community, Inc.; and the Rev. Adan Mairena, pastor of West Kensington Ministry at Norris Square in Philadelphia.
Gayle Griffin, assistant superintendent in the Department of Teaching and Learning for Newark (NJ) Public Schools, who has a Ph.D. in preaching, will lead the event’s opening and closing worship services.
Workshops will provide hands-on analysis and suggestions for taking action to counter gun violence with titles such as “Guns and the Assault on American Democracy;” “Organizing Communities, Congregations and Presbyteries;” and “What You Will Need to Talk About Guns in Church.”
“Open space” will be provided for anyone who wants to initiate and lead a workshop related to the colloquium’s theme, the conference brochure said.
There will be biblical and theological reflection by the Rev. Catherine Snyder, Presbyterian campus minister at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, VA, where a student gunned down 32 people before killing himself on April 16, 2007.
Also scheduled to provide biblical and theological reflection is the Rev. Jim Atwood, a retired minister from National Capital Presbytery, who helped draft an overture addressing the tragedy of America’s gun violence, which was approved earlier this summer by the PC(USA)’s 218th General Assembly.
The overture, among other things, calls on the entire church to pray for “God’s comfort, courage and peace” for the 80 families who lose loved ones every day to guns in America and to pray for the 1,000 families who experience death by guns daily in the developing world.
It also calls on the entire church to closely monitor the political process in cities, states and the nation for opportunities to work for the passage of laws that control gun access and to seize these opportunities to support legislation that will make “streets, schools, and places of worship free from gun violence.”
Atwood said next month’s colloquium is long overdue.
“The conference at Stony Point, we’ve never had anything like this before,” he said of the PC(USA). “We’ve never talked about gun violence to the extent that we will at Stony Point. And you know it’s about time.”
Click here to download a registration brochure for the colloquium  . For more information contact the Rev. Charles Ryu, director of program ministries at Stony Point Center, by phone: (845) 786-5674, x111; or by email. | 
