“Freedom from Fear asks two questions: is it possible for Christians to nonviolently respond to terror and tyranny around the globe and if so, how can Christians respond,” Josh Kaufman-Horner said, an Eastern Alum and founder of Freedom from Fear.
Freedom from Fear (FfF) is a non-profit association whose mission, to inspire the first global non-violent civil rights movement, is modeled after Biblical mandates and historical figures.
FfF participants, eucharists, use three methods to challenge those who rule their country by terror, seek to rule by terror, or profit from terror. Eucharists gather locally on a weekly or monthly basis, prior to Church gatherings, to pray for world peace.
The regular time and location of each of these prayer meetings will be published on the FfF website as a means of communicating to would be terrorists.
These “unterrorist cells”, which live out the Biblical mandate (Hebrews 13:3) to pray for those who are imprisoned and tortured, gather globally as well. Some FfF members travel in teams to tyrannized countries to pray for the enslaved people there.
“They fully anticipate being arrested in this effort and follow the model of Martin Luther King in seeking to fill the prisons in pursuit of civil rights for all,” Kaufman-Horner said.
As an example of this strategy Kaufman-Horner points to one of his key advisors. In 1999, James Mawdsley faced a 17-year prison sentence for handing out pro-democracy fliers in the Burmese Village of Tachilek. He served 14 months in prison for his third arrest and then wrote a book about the experience, entitled The Iron Road.
“Staff at FfF are currently editing Mawdsley’s book into a resource manual, which should prove useful in preparing participants who are going to other countries and willing to risk their lives for others,” Kaufman-Horner said.
Other eucharists offer themselves in exchange for those held hostage in tyrannized countries. An historical example of this act of substitution was Sister Maria Stella and her 11 Nazareth sisters who were granted a requested execution in Aug. 1941 in exchange for the release of 120 men captured by the Nazis in Nowogrodek, now Belarus.
Following his years at Eastern, in the early 1990s, Kaufman-Horner spent seven months abroad in Iraq and South Africa. He provided aid to Kurdish Iraqi refugees with Medicins Sans Frontieres and worked with Moss Nthla in the townships of South Africa.
Kaufman-Horner plans to coordinate with Sara Frymoyer to set up an unterrorist cell at Eastern.
“Jesus was willing to be broken on our behalf,” he said. “Should we not be willing to be broken for others?”
For more information, visit www.eucharism.org
Sources: eucharism.org and Josh Kaufman-Horner.