In the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob,
The Living, the Promise

I believe in Jesus
, child of God
, chosen of God, born of the woman Mary
, who listened to women and liked them, 
who stayed in their homes
, who discussed the Kingdom with them, 
who was followed and financed 
by women disciples.

Native Spirit Ah Nee Mah

The early Church appears to have been satisfied with the simple affirmation ‘Jesus is Lord’, discovering the Spirit in the power of resurrection. Perhaps our task as progressive Christians is to reinterpret these concepts for our present time. I suspect that this will have more to do with discipleship than with the worship of a divine Christ (Matt 7:21).

I believe in God, the source of all life, wholeness, and love.

I believe that God is revealed in Jesus Christ.

I grew up reciting the Apostle’s Creed in church. We read it aloud so often that I memorized it without conscious effort, but by my early teen years I began to doubt many of its assertions. Now …

God is all without being any thing while being the all in every thing. God is the perhaps at the edge of every moment of choosing. God does nothing but nothing does without God. God is the …

I believe in (trust in, not just intellectually assent to) a Power, Force, Rational Principle at the core of the Universe that is the Source of all that is. I believe it has a personal quality (i.e. “father/mother”). This Power is so much greater than anything we can imagine that, for all practical purposes, it is beyond measure and without limit (“all” powerful…at least in comparison with us).

The Christianity we have inherited in the 21st century is like an onion, with Jesus’ wisdom at the core and layers and layers of church doctrine added over the centuries. Each of those layers was a solution to a problem in its own time. Progressive Christianity has let go of virtually all of those layers, recognizing that the core teaching – the Jesus experience, if you will – is what transcends time and is worth preserving. The result is that most progressive Christian churches no longer use the old creeds. We are not willing to recite what we cannot believe.

I believe in God as my creator and as the creator of the world which God sets before me as a gift for my joy and use, for me to tend in gratitude and affection. I believe …

I worship and adore God, source, essence, and aim of all things, spirit that enlivens all beings.
I follow the way of Jesus, who found God in himself and shared a way for others to find God in themselves.

I am human.
My ancestors were stars;
their atoms move in me yet.

As progressive Christians in the 21st century, we are uncomfortable with rigid statements of belief, as we recognise our understandings are shaped by life experiences within cultural and environmental contexts. Yet, there are some common understandings which continue to shape our lives, both individually and in community with others. These we seek to affirm and celebrate

There is only one God who is at all times everywhere in creation. Every man, woman and child is a child of God: we all belong to his family. We therefore say God loves us as a parent loves the offspring.

We believe that happiness awaits humanity and that our existence is not absurd.

Nina Brock from Ovando, Montana, writes: Question: Your comment in a recent column about Paul not being able to say the Nicene Creed prompts a question. We attended your week long seminar in Berkeley, CA, last summer …

We believe in God, the creative force that sustains and nurtures humanity in ways beyond our understanding. We believe that Jesus of Nazareth embodied the power of this force; extraordinarily able to grasp its meaning, he revealed …

I believe in God, The Universal Personal Spirit of unsurpassable love, who from nothing created this immense universe of both causal regularity and chance events, and with its emerging creatures possessing various capacities and freedoms to respond to God’s love and vision for their place and function in the universe.