What We Believe ·
Our beliefs about God
We believe that there is one God, whose demands on us are absolute and whose help for us is sufficient. In love God created the world good and makes everyone equally in God’s image, male and female of every race and people, to live as one community. God’s power in the world can look like weakness, because it is the kind of love that gives itself up for us. God’s love can look like vulnerability, because God is affected by the tragedies of life. We are comforted by the assurance that in mysterious and marvelous ways, God’s purpose of peace, justice, freedom will prevail.
Our beliefs about Jesus
We believe that Jesus was both fully human and fully God. In his life on earth he preached good news to the poor and release to the captives. He taught by word and deed; healed the sick and comforted the sorrowing. He stood up against all powers that degraded and dominated human life. Jesus was crucified, suffering the depths of human pain and giving his life for the sins of the world. God raised him from the dead, breaking the power of sin and evil, delivering us from death to life eternal. Jesus lives!
Our beliefs about the Spirit
By the presence of the Spirit, God is active in the world today, making community where there is division and bringing healing for that which is broken. The Spirit inspires faith in men, women and children and leads us into ministries of witness and compassion. The Spirit works in mysterious and marvelous ways to renew all life. The Spirit gives God’s people courage to pray and to face each day with hope.
Our beliefs about the Bible
The people of God set down what God has said and done in their midst and how the people responded. These writings emerged out of the community’s life in the course of its story with God. We believe that the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are the unique and authoritative witness to Jesus Christ and God’s Word to us. Relying on the Spirit, we affirm our responsibility and joy in interpreting Scripture. Therefore we use the best available methods to understand them in their historical and cultural setting and the literary forms in which they are cast. We believe that Scripture reveals fresh insights because the living Lord speaks through them.
Our beliefs about salvation
Salvation is the restoration of a broken relationship between God’s people and God. This happens in many and diverse ways both in the midst of human life and after death. Through the sacraments, this grace of Christ is particularly potent. The evidence of salvation can be seen in lives of devotion, compassion, justice and truth. Ultimate union with God and all creation is the providence granted by God alone.
Our beliefs about other faiths
The church has often lived and worked among those who do not share the Christian faith. It has been influenced by other religions and by secular faiths and ideologies. In turn it has affected them for good or ill. We do not fully comprehend God’s way with other faiths, but we should reject nothing in them that is true. We need to listen with openness and respect to their words to us, testing them always by God’s Word in Scripture. We should be loving and unafraid in our dealing with them. We know God calls us to share the gift of Christ will all who will receive it. We are confident God judges all faiths, including our own.
Our beliefs about sin
Men and women broke community with God, refusing to trust and obey. Their community with each other was broken by shame and alienation, hatred and murder, lust and pride. We confess that in all generations human beings have rejected God again and again. At times we seek in pride to become gods: we deny the good limits that define our humanity. At other times we draw back in apathy: we refuse to fulfill our human responsibilities. The antagonisms between races, nations, and neighbors, the barriers separating men and women, children and parents, the estrangement of human beings from the natural order, are results of our sin against God.
Our beliefs about disagreement and dialogue
Faithful Christians disagree. We interpret Scripture differently and we live our lives of faith differently. We worship differently and pray differently. We encourage people to question traditions and to explore their own beliefs. Yet, there is one God, one faith, one baptism, one God who is Lord of all. We acknowledge that our visible unity is a gift of Christ, and that the manifestation of the Spirit of Christ in our world is the removable of all distinctions between persons.
Our beliefs about the church
We acknowledge the true church of Jesus Christ wherever the work of the Spirit is evident: in preaching and sacraments, in the new life and continuous growth of believers, in the sharing of spiritual gifts and material things, in mission and service to the world. The boundaries of the church are not clearly known to us, but God knows those who are his.