The Center was started in 1982 as a ministry of St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Columbus, Ohio. It was 1981, the era of Cold War politics. For the United States, the Soviet Union was “the enemy.” Missiles and other arms build-ups were occurring around the world. Since then, we’ve become a more religiously diverse organization trying to tackle questions of peace and interfaith relations.
From the opening “Arts for Peace” event, through the development of our family-oriented Peace Schools education model, to post-9/11 community conversations on the idea of a “just peace,” and our first annual conference titled “Children of Abraham: Building Interfaith Peace and Community” in 2009, the Interfaith Center for Peace has been increasingly actively involved in working for peace in our religious communities, in Central Ohio, and in our country.
