Christianity is a religion which unfolds around two theological ideas, the incarnation, and the resurrection. Both ideas have events and ideas which contribute to their development and logical consequences and practices which evolve from them.

Christianity teaches that human beings were created free and good, and that from the beginning of time we have used our freedom to make wrong choices. The most fundamental wrong choice we make is not to accept our dependence upon God. This wrong choice has created a gap between ourselves and God, a gap we cannot bridge without God’s help. Human beings have tried to help themselves in various ways, most notably by developing principles to which we believe we should adhere in order to improve our situation. Our high principles serve to remind us how far we fall from the standards we set.

Christianity teaches that God, rather than giving us laws to observe and principles to achieve, decided to become a human being, draw near to us in the lives we live, and to meet us where we are. We call that divine intimacy the incarnation, meaning God’s taking flesh. In meeting us, Jesus met human sin, and that sin turned upon him and put him to death. And that event led to the second point of our faith.

Because God has an eternal, perfect life in store for us, God could not allow human sin to have the last word, and so he raised Jesus from the dead. Not back to an earthly life; Jesus was not a resuscitated corpse. But he passed, by a creative act of God, in to a new realm of life, life in the presence of God the Father, life which is completed, fulfilled, and everlasting. In order for us to have the benefits that new life, God gave us certain ways in which the people of God can lay hands on that new life and begin to live some of its implications right now. Two of those ways are baptism and the Eucharist, also known as Holy Communion or the Mass. In baptism, we go through Christ’s death (drowning in the waters of new life, to put it sacramentally and paradoxically) and are therefore inoculated against the ultimate power of death. Baptism happens once, but every week we receive holy communion in the Eucharist, and because we believe Jesus is present in that meal, and thereby present in us, his presence renews and strengthens the bond established with us in baptism.

God not only left behind certain signposts to show us the way to him, God also is present with us in the Holy Spirit. By the Spirit, God has acted through history in the realm of religious and philosophical ideas, in the teachings of the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, and in the community we call the Church. While we do not believe that the Church is infallible, a position impossible to argue with any integrity, we do believe that the Spirit of God dwells in his church, drawing it closer to the divine will and purpose.

We also believe that God continues to call people into relationship with himself. The Church exists to welcome those people and to incorporate them, by education, formation, prayer and practice, into God’s community. We call our life in the church a growth process by which we are drawn into a deeper relationship with each other and with God and grow up into the full stature of Christ, which God intends for us. We engage this new life by changing our old life, by prayer, which is communication with God, and by participation in the life and work of the Church.