We Episcopalians believe in a loving, liberating, and life-giving God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God is love, and God’s very being is a trinity of loving relationship: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In Christ, God invites us to share that love; wherever there is pain or alienation, God longs to knit all people and creation back into wholeness and relationship.
Our Presiding Bishop Michael Curry, who leads The Episcopal Church, has invited us the think about how we are the Episcopal branch of the Jesus Movement. The Jesus Movement is the ongoing community of people who center their lives on Jesus and following him into loving, liberating and life-giving relationship with God, each other and creation.
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.
Our beliefs are succinctly captured in the Baptismal Covenant.
You may also hear Episcopalians talk about “three-legged stools.” This is our way of talking about the way that we approach our faith — through Scripture, tradition, and reason.
Scripture
Our beliefs and worship flow from the Holy Scriptures. We use the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) of the Bible, along with the Book of Common Prayer. Every Sunday we read and preach from a 3-year cycle called The Lectionary—it provides a lesson from the Old Testament, the New Testament, the Psalms, and the Gospel every week.
While the Bible is our sacred text, we acknowledge that it is an ancient human document, full of all the contradictions and inconsistencies of humanity. We seek in Scripture spiritual inspiration, historical grounding for our faith, the teachings of Jesus and of the Hebrew prophets before him, and guidance for our own life of prayer and service.
Tradition
We are part of the ancient lineage of Christianity and members of the worldwide Anglican Communion. Our principal celebration, the Eucharist, is modeled on Jesus’ Last Supper with his disciples and the communal meals of the earliest Christian communities.
Reason
We do not believe the Spirit stopped speaking when the last page of the Bible was recorded. We believe that God granted us the gift of reason to see the influence of the Holy Spirit through our own experiences, the experiences of our community and the experiences of Christians down through time. We also believe the natural sciences play a role in making clear the divine design.
While we are committed Christians, we are deeply respectful toward other faiths and committed to inter-faith dialogue and witness. While we feel called to follow Jesus, we don’t presume that all people are called to the same path.
You can find an outline of our faith in the Catechism in our Book of Common Prayer.
Trinity Commons 