What We Believe
As a protestant church, we hold the priesthood of all believers and the sanctity of individual conscience as primary, so the following statement of belief is a generalized overview of what our church teaches and bases its practices on. We do not require conformity of belief to be a part of our church and in fact celebrate a diversity of understandings and beliefs.
We believe in the unbounded love of God that is expressed in and through all creation and has its ultimate expression in the life, teachings, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. As a progressive Christian church within the United Church of Christ, we believe God’s truth and light can be found within the sacred text of the Hebrew scriptures and the New Testament and center our weekly worship there. However, we also believe God’s revelation to humanity came first through creation itself and then through a person (Jesus Christ), not a text. So we do not idolize the Bible with literalist interpretations. Instead we seek God’s truth and light together in community in the context of historical and modern scholarship and scientific discovery.
We believe that the Kingdom of God/the Kingdom of Heaven as referenced in scripture is more an eternal reality threading through this life than an afterlife reality towards which we are aiming and judging others to be saved or condemned therein. Our aim is better expressed as aligning ourselves with what Jesus’ prayer asked: “may Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Matt 6:10
That Kingdom, that will of God, as revealed through scripture does not center itself on maintaining the status quo or propping up the powerholders or vindicating national projects, but rather is often confrontational and suspicious of such things and instead draws attention to those underserved and underprivileged and on the margins of our society (“Whatever you did for the least of these you did for me.” Matt 25:40). Therefore our concern and attention as a church tends towards those on the margins as well, be they the poor, the differently abled, the maligned of society, the gender expansive, etc…(see our Open and Affirming Statement here). We believe that no one falls outside of God’s love and the salvific work of Jesus Christ (“For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things. Colossians 1:20).
We believe that our Christian lives must necessarily involve a commitment to the care and restoration of the wounded and abused natural world (“The earth is the Lord’s and everything therein.” Psalm 24:1). This finds expression in our charitable giving as a church, our volunteering, and threads through our worship and teaching as well. While we understand the church to be a community of people centered on Christ more than a building, we also honor the beauty and importance of the physical space that houses our community. We believe like everything else in our lives our material possessions and places can always be better aligned to God’s purposes and so we are regularly working on creating a more environmentally sustainable and healthy place for us to be church.
While we believe that God’s love and beauty is expressed through creation, Jesus Christ, the formation of community, and in the exchange of receiving and tending to those in need, we also believe that God’s beauty is expressed in unique and important ways through the arts. This finds expression in our community through the music and visuals of our worship services but also through monthly concerts, author and poet talks, and by giving space for visual artists to have their studios in our building (“Finally siblings, whatever is beautiful and true, excellent and praiseworthy, give yourself to such things.” Phil. 4:8). We are committed to sponsoring the arts and fostering such beauty in and through the Winchester community.
This is something of what we believe. Ultimately, we seek humility in our approach and profession of faith in God, knowing that all language and concepts fall far short of the mystery of Christ and the glory of God’s presence and action in this world. We honor other expressions of religious faith and pray that together we will eventually manifest God’s intention for a loving, healed and peace-filled world.
