People of Faith Against the Death Penalty

People
of Faith Against the Death Penalty is the only national nonprofit organization
in the United States focused solely on educating, organizing, and mobilizing
religious and faith-based organizations and communities for abolition of the
death penalty. Founded in 1994, PFADP has had enormous successes with
innovative strategies to mobilize faith communities and concerned citizens to
action. In the United States, the death penalty will
not be repealed without renewed calls for repeal coming from the religious
community. With more than 100 million members in denominations already opposed
to the death penalty, the U.S. religious community is a sleeping giant on the
death penalty, an enormous cache of potential cultural and political influence
that could transform the abolition movement if more of its resources were
mobilized for repeal. So far the U.S. abolition movement has tapped only a
fraction of the human, political, and financial resources of the American
religious community. PFADP’s Kairos Campaign seeks to bridge the gaps.

Because of declining death sentencing and execution rates in the U.S.
along with states having begun to abolish the death penalty, the next decade is
a kairos moment, the ripe political, social, and cultural moment towards
abolition. Now is the time for the U.S. religious community to have its
voices raised for repeal. Through our Kairos Campaign to Mobilize Religious
Action to Repeal America’s Death Penalty PFADP is facilitating moving the religious
community in America to become strategically engaged with the abolition
movement and bring about further political shifts towards abolition. The
campaign is composed of national, regional, and state clergy and lay leadership
in the religious community and engages them in the programs of state and
national abolition groups. Through the Kairos Campaign PFADP is (1) raising the
death penalty on religious organizations’ agendas, (2) providing coordination
among faith communities and abolition groups, and (3) give them the ability to
take concrete action through grassroots-mobilizing efforts such as state-level
sign-on letters for repeal for religious leaders and lay people of faith,
through national sign-on letters, and resolutions for congregations and religious
bodies, businesses, local governments, and community groups.