VALLEY FORGE, PA (ABNS 6/7/12)—A special International Ministries (IM) edition of Dan Buttry’s Blessed Are the Peacemakers premiered at the World Mission Conference held May 19 – 25 at the Green Lake Conference Center in Green Lake, Wisconsin. Buttry is IM’s Global Consultant for Peace and Refuge.
Blessed Are the Peacemakers is a collection of 62 mini-biographies of various peacemakers from around the world. It is divided into sections on Prophets and Visionaries, Martyrs, Theorists, Advocates, Trainers/Teachers, Organizers, Mediators, Nonviolent Activists, and Artists. Each section has an introductory chapter. Though it features people of many religious backgrounds, there is a heavy representation of Baptists: Martin Luther King, Jr., Bernard Lafayette, John Lewis, Jimmy Carter, Carl Upchurch, Ken Sehested, Lucius Walker, and Wati Aier.
The IM edition includes an extended chapter by Reid Trulson, IM executive director, and Buttry about American Baptist peacemaking missionaries, beginning with Adoniram Judson, the founder of the modern missionary movement in the U.S., and continuing through the present. Judson joined the Massachusetts Peace Society while he was in Burma, writing about his conviction that Bible, peace and missionary societies were “forming that three-fold cord, which will ultimately bind all the families of man in universal peace and love.” Judson also played a role in ending the First Anglo-Burmese War.
Other American Baptist missionaries featured in the book are George Liele, Thomasine Allen, the Hopevale Martyrs, William Axling, Martin England, Conrad Browne, Gustavo Parajon, and contemporary missionaries who serve through IM: Ruth Mooney, Charles West and Lauran Bethell.
Buttry refers to these stories as “the missing peace” in our American Baptist missionary history. “Every American Baptist church, seminary and college needs to know these stories to add to the inspiring history of our missionary endeavor,” Buttry says.
Books signed by the author can be purchased by sending a check for $20 made out to Dan Buttry to his home address: 2300 Neibel St., Hamtramck, MI 48212. He promises he will get books out as soon as he gets back from his current peacemaking mission in Kenya.
American Baptist International Ministries (IM) was organized in 1814 as the first Baptist international mission agency in America. It began its pioneer mission work in Burma and today works in Asia, Africa, Europe, the Middle East and the Americas serving more than 1,800 long-term and short-term missionaries. Its central mission is to help people come to faith in Jesus, grow in their relationship with God, and change their worlds through the power of the Spirit. It works with respected partners in over 70 countries in ministries that meet human need.
American Baptist Churches USA is one of the most diverse Christian denominations today, with 5,500 local congregations comprised of 1.3 million members, across the United States and Puerto Rico, all engaged in God’s mission around the world.