FAITH FOUNDATIONS
The Phoenix Affirmations
The public face of Christianity in America today bears little connection to the historic faith of our ancestors. It represents even less our own faith as Christians who continue to celebrate the gifts of our Creator, revealed and embodied in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Heartened by our experience of the transforming presence of Christ’s Holy Spirit in our world, we find ourselves in a time and place where we will be no longer silent. We hereby mark an end to our silence by making the following affirmations:
As people who are joyfully and unapologetically Christian, we pledge ourselves completely to the way of Love. We work to express our love, as Jesus teaches us, in three ways: by loving God, neighbor, and self.
Matt 22:34-40 // Mk 12:28-31 // Lk 10:25-28; Cf. Deut 6:5; Lev. 19:18
The Creeds
As recipients of a story much bigger than ourselves, we do not want to pick and choose what we believe about God based on our own personal whims or limited experience. That would be quite exhausting and error-prone! Instead, we desire to receive the faith taught by Christ, revealed in the Scriptures, handed down from the first apostles, and embraced by the church for 2,000 years.
With Christians everywhere, we affirm our faith as summarized in the two historic creeds: the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed. These creeds summarize the witness to who God is and what he is doing, and serve as our framework for interpreting the Scriptures.
