Statement of Faith

One supreme divine being (whom we call God) is the self-existent source of all creation. By means of self-revelation, humans come to know aspects of this God, though never completely, exclusively, or perfectly; in other words, we don't know all there is to know about God, we aren't the only ones who know about God, and some of what we think we know about God is wrong. As a 2-dimensional object can only perceive a thin slice of a 3-dimensional thing, we should acknowledge and continually remind ourselves that we, the created, can never fully comprehend our Creator.

People understand and relate to God in different ways for different reasons. As stated above, we should remain mindful that our revelation of God does not exhaust the scope of all there is to know. We should be careful not to dismiss or demonize conceptions of God that may not perfectly match our own.

Although often referred to with gendered pronouns (as in Academy teachings), because God is ontologically spirit, He has no gender. Still, because people relate to God in different ways, we should not expect or require people to perceive Him through the traditionally male-oriented lens (Father, He/Him/His, etc.). God is within and beyond all human understandings and expressions of gender.

God is, in His quintessential nature, good. While we should be careful to not dismiss or demonize conceptions of God that do not match our own, we also should not accept all conceptions as true. The fundamental truth that God is good provides a filter through which we can formulate and interpret doctrine, and a standard by which we can accept or reject claims made about God (whether in sacred texts—the Bible included—or otherwise).

Acting out of His goodness, God was incarnated into the human experience as the one we know as Jesus of Nazareth, to show us how to know Him, not as a far away Deity, but as a near and loving Divine Parent ("Heavenly Father" in the Bible). Jesus' life and teachings are an example of how to love God, ourselves, and one another, and of how to live into our heritage as God's divine offspring.

The nearness of God is experienced through the indwelling of His Spirit, who inhabits all who have accepted God's gift of eternal life in and through Christ.

Humanity was created to provide an image or representation of God in the physical realm. As a result, all human beings hold sacred worth and value, even when their created intent is experientially unrealized.

There is a fundamental brokenness in humanity that resulted and continues to result from our failure to understand, accept, and live into our divine identity as God-imagers. Hatred, cruelty, greed, indifference to suffering, etc. are but symptoms of our underlying identity problem. God, in Christ, provided us with the means to repair this identity, and to live out His purpose for our lives.

In our new-birth salvation experience, we intentionally and progressively move toward the ultimate restoration of our divine identity ("from glory to glory"). As we elevate our beliefs, empowering ourselves to think and act more fully out of our divinity, we reclaim our commission to image God in the world.

As God-imagers, we should affirm and embrace all people, with no distinctions between race, ethnicity or culture (Jew nor Greek), socioeconomic status (slave nor free), sex (male or female), or in principle, many other categories. Consequently, all forms of discrimination relating to intrinsic factors is contrary to our heritage and commission as citizens of God's Kingdom.

Comprised of the Old Testament (the Hebrew Scriptures) and the New Testament, the Bible is the sacred text of Christianity and is profitable as an instrument for faith formation and instruction.

The Bible is inspired of God in the sense that He moved upon the hearts of its writers to record a life-giving and empowering witness of Him, their communities, and their experiences. The Bible is an important part of—not the end of—our journey of faith, inviting us to have our own personal and communal experience of God and God's Kingdom.

The lessons we learn from the Bible are more important than whether or not it is historically accurate in every detail. Its writers were particular people with particular understandings of their world and of the God who created it. We should honor their significant contributions to our own faith formation, while not imprisoning ourselves to their scientific, sociological, and/or theological understandings and worldviews. They were products of their time and place, and their beliefs about God and His creation reflect that. We must account for this when seeking to interpret and apply the sacred texts they were divinely inspired to write.

The Kingdom of God/Heaven is a present-day reality qualified by the reign of God over Heaven and in the earth. It provides humanity with a better, higher way of being, thinking, speaking, and behaving, one that is consistent with our divine identity and citizenship.

The Kingdom is an expression of the heart of the King, hence any faithful expression of the Kingdom will be oriented toward justice and righteousness. Scripture is direct and unapologetic in its claims that God cares deeply for those in society who are the most weak, vulnerable and needy. As agents of the Kingdom, then, these and others who exist on the margins of society should also be our care and concern. We express the King's justice and righteousness by advocating on their behalf, and working not only to ease their burden, but to identify and dismantle the very systems that consigned them to the margins in the first place.

By its very nature, the Kingdom is supernatural, and offers us the ability to tap into God's divine power to live supernatural lives, and to lead supernatural ministries characterized, in part, by healings, miracles, signs and wonders.

The Kingdom is one of choice, not compulsion. As salt and light, we invite people into the Kingdom; we don't demand their entry as dictators and tyrants. Consequently, we should reject attempts to seek socio-political and economic power in order to force people to conform to our sense of a Christian way of life. Instead, we should bid them come to the Way so that the Spirit of God will help them grow into a more fully realized expression of their higher, divine self. Thus, the Kingdom is expanded through personal transformation, not political manipulation or legislation.