Serve, Work and Transform: PPF became a home where we could be our full selves

Wednesday, December 21, 2022

PPF became a home where we could be our full selves

The Lord sets the prisoners free...

Psalm 146

At the start of this Advent season we say to you, “Come along with us!” There’s never been a better moment to be Christ’s body, hastening the coming of our Savior who took on flesh “to bring good news to the poor… to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18-19).

PPF has become the home that connects us, equips us, challenges us, and sustains us in embracing this lineage of resistance. Whether you are newer to this community or you have been deeply invested in PPF’s work for decades, this is a moment for all of us to give what we have to sustain this lineage of resistance for the days to come.

We are inviting you to start giving or increase your current financial commitment to PPF this Advent season!

During the racial reckoning and uprising of 2020, we (Liz and Dexter) desperately needed a spiritual home that embraced both our Presbyterian tradition and our longing for a movement space that would take seriously the calls of Black, Indigenous and other leaders of color to dismantle the prison industrial complex and divest from the fossil fuels ravaging our planet.

I (Liz) found PPF in 2020 when I literally Googled “Presbyterian” and “Defund the police” together, which led me to the PPF Defund the Police Action Circle I joined to start digging into this call from leaders of the Black liberation movement.

I (Dexter) found PPF (or rather, abby mohaupt of Fossil-Free PCUSA found me!) around the same time when I discovered that, despite my best efforts to have my Board of Pensions retirement savings in fossil fuel-free accounts, there was actually no way to be fully divested when it came to my pastor’s pension. PPF, over the last 2 years, has not only given us a place to learn and grow in our activism as Jesus-followers. It has also given us a family - a space to find belonging in our collective struggle for a world where everyone can thrive free from violence.

At a time when fewer and fewer PCUSA spaces have been resonating with the theology that was taking us to the streets in protest alongside marginalized communities, PPF became a home where we could be our full selves.

One of the lectionary readings for the first Sunday of Advent this year includes Isaiah 2:4, when the prophet envisions the time when all people will “beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks...” This is an abolitionist vision, in which literal weapons of violence are broken down into materials that can be refashioned into gardening tools that nurture new life.

Today, we believe this means divesting from every tendril of the prison industrial complex so that we can invest in historically under-funded public goods like affordable housing, universal healthcare, and alternative forms of community-based crisis response services that make us truly safe. This means fully divesting from the fossil fuel industry that is making us choke on wildfire smoke in early fall so that we can invest in a green economy that allows all creation to thrive. This means turning guns into gardens, a literal swords-into-plowshares ministry. This means resisting militarism and violence wherever we find them, both in our world working to end wars in Ukraine and elsewhere and in ourselves, as we build up the Church on a foundation of peace.

Today we gift you with this song, Peace On Earth, by Matt Black as we envision a world anew together.

As PPF embraces abolition as an organizing value in its new vision statement, we invite all of you to join in a ministry that’s all “about presence, not absence,” as abolitionist movement leader Ruth Wilson Gilmore says. Yes, we dismantle the systems and structures that are killing us, AND - we show up with our full selves as our greatest offering, ready to co-labor with God in building up the new world envisioned by the prophets, embodied in Jesus’ ministry of bringing heaven to earth, and lived out in our own neighborhoods as we divest from violence in all its forms and invest in community care.

PPF’s new vision statement closes with “We build peace through the abolition of structural violence and by living into alternatives to violence with creativity, intelligence, imagination, and love.”

Donate Today

Let’s go all in with PPF to build peace this Advent season with year-end gifts that will sustain this ministry for the next leg of the journey together.