"We Episcopalians believe in a loving, liberating, and life-giving God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. As constituent members of the Anglican Communion in the United States, we are descendants of and partners with the Church of England and the Scottish Episcopal Church, and are part of the third largest group of Christians in the world.
We believe in following the teachings of Jesus Christ, whose life, death, and resurrection saved the world.
We have a legacy of inclusion, aspiring to tell and exemplify God’s love for every human being; women and men serve as bishops, priests, and deacons in our church. Laypeople and clergy cooperate as leaders at all levels of our church. Leadership is a gift from God, and can be expressed by all people in our church, regardless of sexual identity or orientation.
We believe that God loves you – no exceptions."
https://episcopalchurch.org/what-we-believe
We believe in following the teachings of Jesus Christ, whose life, death, and resurrection saved the world.
We have a legacy of inclusion, aspiring to tell and exemplify God’s love for every human being; women and men serve as bishops, priests, and deacons in our church. Laypeople and clergy cooperate as leaders at all levels of our church. Leadership is a gift from God, and can be expressed by all people in our church, regardless of sexual identity or orientation.
We believe that God loves you – no exceptions."
https://episcopalchurch.org/what-we-believe
Four Things About Church People Often Get Backwards
Church is for you, but it's not about you. Church is about God. Programs, services and the pursuit of excellence will better our lives and the lives of others, but they cannot save us from our self-righteousness, addictions or the limitations of our perspective. Only God can save us. God is Love. Love is the only answer.
God is the source of life. If our focus is God, then we will be able to do all the functions of life gracefully (with God's Grace), including letting go and death. If it's about us, we can't.
God invites us into His life, we do not invite God into ours. If we invite God into our lives, we are constrained by the limitations of our lives. We live for a finite period of time, with limited perspective; we all have gifts, but none of us has all the gifts all the time, or in fullest measure. God in Jesus invites us to enter His life. God's nature is the miracle that saves us from our limitations. God is good and gives good gifts. God forgives and gives us His power to forgive. God in His nature is a community (Trinity: Three in One). God is Spirit and the Spirit communicates. Living in God's life is perfect freedom while being more grounded in reality and more relational, than we can be living with ourselves at the center. You will be more yourself than you dare to imagine, not less.
Faith is relational, not transactional. God doesn't give expecting something in return or holding out a reward, if we do what He wants. God offers freely, to all--no exceptions, no conditions. That doesn't sound right because that is not the way the world works. It is the incomprehensibility of God's goodness that itself becomes a stumbling block.
Faith is not cognitive assent to a set of doctrines. Abraham is considered faithful. He lived before Moses and the Law, and well before Jesus, who lived before creeds. Faith is accepting God's invitation to be in relationship, to trust God and live accordingly.
Commandments are descriptive, not prescriptive. Jesus summarized the commandments: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets." The first four are about the vertical relationship--with God. The second six are about our horizontal relationships with each other. God is first because if we love God with all that we are, we will be living in relationship with God and God's Holy Spirit within us will so move us that all the rest of the commandments will be a description of how we live. We treat rules as if they are transactional, but God is not offering a contract; God offers His life.
God is the source of life. If our focus is God, then we will be able to do all the functions of life gracefully (with God's Grace), including letting go and death. If it's about us, we can't.
God invites us into His life, we do not invite God into ours. If we invite God into our lives, we are constrained by the limitations of our lives. We live for a finite period of time, with limited perspective; we all have gifts, but none of us has all the gifts all the time, or in fullest measure. God in Jesus invites us to enter His life. God's nature is the miracle that saves us from our limitations. God is good and gives good gifts. God forgives and gives us His power to forgive. God in His nature is a community (Trinity: Three in One). God is Spirit and the Spirit communicates. Living in God's life is perfect freedom while being more grounded in reality and more relational, than we can be living with ourselves at the center. You will be more yourself than you dare to imagine, not less.
Faith is relational, not transactional. God doesn't give expecting something in return or holding out a reward, if we do what He wants. God offers freely, to all--no exceptions, no conditions. That doesn't sound right because that is not the way the world works. It is the incomprehensibility of God's goodness that itself becomes a stumbling block.
Faith is not cognitive assent to a set of doctrines. Abraham is considered faithful. He lived before Moses and the Law, and well before Jesus, who lived before creeds. Faith is accepting God's invitation to be in relationship, to trust God and live accordingly.
Commandments are descriptive, not prescriptive. Jesus summarized the commandments: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets." The first four are about the vertical relationship--with God. The second six are about our horizontal relationships with each other. God is first because if we love God with all that we are, we will be living in relationship with God and God's Holy Spirit within us will so move us that all the rest of the commandments will be a description of how we live. We treat rules as if they are transactional, but God is not offering a contract; God offers His life.
