What We Believe

We believe in one God, whose love creates, sustains, and directs our world. God made us and all people in his own image, free to make choices and to live in harmony with God and each other. Because all people are made in the image of God, all are worthy of respect and honor, and all can respond to the love of God.

Jesus Christ is the only Son of God, the only perfect image of God the Father, who perfectly reflects and reveals that God is love. In becoming fully human, Jesus lived among us, that we might be adopted as children of God. By his obedience in life and death, Jesus made the offering we could not make, freeing us from the power of sin and reconciling us to God. By his resurrection from the dead, Jesus overcame death and opened for us the way of eternal life.
The Holy Spirit is God at work in the world and in the Church even now. The Spirit leads us into all truth and enables us to grow in the likeness of Christ.
One of the central ways the Holy Spirit speaks to us today is through the Bible, or the Holy Scriptures. The Bible is a collection of books written and compiled at different times and in different places by human authors under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, to show God at work in nature and history, to set forth the life and teachings of Jesus Christ, and to proclaim the Good News for all people. We understand the meaning of the Bible by the help of the Spirit, who guides the Church in the true interpretation of the Scriptures.
In addition to Scripture, the Spirit’s guidance also comes to us through Tradition, the process by which the Church has transmitted and reinterpreted the truths of the faith through the ages, and through Reason, the ability God has given each of us to seek answers to our own questions and grow spiritually.
The Episcopal Church accepts the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed as sufficient statements of the Christian faith.