PASADENA, Calif. — Glen Stassen, an evangelical peace activist who taught Christian ethics for more than 50 years, died April 26, months after being diagnosed with metastatic prostate cancer.
Stassen, 78, an author and the Lewis B. Smedes Professor of Christian Ethics at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif., pioneered the “just peacemaking” theory, recognized internationally as an alternative to both pacifism and “just war.”
Stassen taught at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., from 1976 to 1996. In 1979 he helped organize a meeting at Deer Park Baptist Church, Louisville, Ky., joining a group in the church that had been meeting to discuss and pray about the need for a greater peace witness in the Southern Baptist Convention. They were joined by an American Baptist peacemaking group started by pacifists in the early days of World War II that expanded influence during the Cold War-era to nonpacifists concerned about the threat of nuclear war.
The dialogue led a year later to the launch of the Baptist Peacemaker, a magazine edited by Glenn Hinson and Carmen Sharp, and another gathering at Deer Park Baptist in 1984, which formed and organized the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America.
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