More often than not, when someone new comes to the Episcopal Church – or any church, really – they want to know what the community believes? The question is a fair one and may signal a preference to be a part of a worshipping community whose beliefs roughly approximate their own. A potential community member may also want to make sure they are not signing on to a cult! So there’s that.

Our last class was a chance for us to explore some of the parameters we can use to decide if a belief is in line with who we say God is. If a belief is not loving because it allows us to judge a group of people as unworthy, then the belief does not fit into the economy of grace that comes from God. If our belief systems are not an invitation to explore the ways of a loving God, then perhaps we need to revisit them.

Our fourth class begins by considering the beliefs we state in the Nicene Creed, which is said each week in worship. The purpose for saying the Creed is not to make sure that individuals believe every word, but to articulate sufficiently the “Faith of the Church.” In other words, we explore how the community is responsible for holding belief, not the individual.

In our third class, we turned towards our experiences of harm – or the witnessing of harm – caused by what appear to be deeply held, but not always correct, if not verifiably false beliefs. This class was a bit more interactive including participant shares about false beliefs and how they have been used to judge or exclude people from the community of Christians. We begin to adopt, as a group, a more loving way of being a community of faith.

Class Two picks up with a brief discussion of the Faith Deconstruction movement and how it sometimes leads us into a solitary spirituality…but we need community! We then discussed a phrase we often hear, “The God of the Bible.” That led us to acknowledge that many of the Biblical descriptions we are called to honor do not exist as we have been taught. We entertained the question: “Can we trust that a living God is speaking to each of us?” And…I would say, Absolutely. We have to!

In Class One, after an introduction to Giving Up False Beliefs, we talked about the Christian notion of conversion as it relates to people of other faiths, especially the Jewish People. We ended with two questions: 1) “Is there a better way than demanding conversion?” 2) “Can God’s vision of humanity be realized if we remain disconnected?” Of course…I would say, Absolutely, not!