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We believe in God,
– Progressive Christian Alliance Statement of Faith
whose love is the source of all life and the desire of our lives;
whose love was given a human face in Jesus of Nazareth;
whose love was crucified by the evil that waits to enslave us all; and,
whose love, defeating even death, is our glorious promise of freedom.
Therefore, though we are sometimes fearful and full of doubt, we trust that love. And in the name of Jesus Christ, we commit ourselves in the service of others:
to seek justice and to live in peace;
to care for the earth and to share the commonwealth of God’s goodness;
to live in the freedom of forgiveness and in the power of the Spirit of Love;
and in the company of all the faithful – past, present, and yet to come –
so to be the Church, for the glory of God.
Amen.
We also subscribe to many of the perspectives of the Marginal Mennonite Society, a group of those largely rejected by Christianity because of their broad and open minds. It’s not an official group, but a movement of like-minded/hearted people.
We are Marginal Mennonites, and we’re not ashamed. We’re marginal because no respectable Mennonite organization would have us. Yet we consider ourselves amongst the legitimate heirs to the Anabaptist tradition.
* The Pilgrim House embraces rites and rituals precisely because of their ability in our context to include everyone. They are the performative embodiment of our belief that everyone is welcome around Christ’s table.
We reject creeds, doctrines, rites, and rituals because they’re man-made, created for the purpose of excluding people. Their primary function is to determine who’s in and who’s out.*
We are inclusive. There are no dues or fees for membership. The only requirement is the desire to identify as Marginal Mennonite. If you say you’re a Marginal Mennonite, that’s good enough for us.
We see God as Mother as well as Father, a heavenly parent who cares for all her children. (Isaiah 49:15: “Can a woman forget her nursing baby, or show no compassion for the child who came from her womb? Even these may forget, yet I won’t forget you.”)
We like Jesus. A lot. The real Jesus. The human teacher who moved around in space and time. The Galilean sage who was obsessed with the Commonwealth of God. The wandering wise man who said “Become passersby!” (Gospel of Thomas 42).
We believe the Commonwealth of God is a state of being, a state of transformed consciousness, available to everyone. (Luke 17:21: “People won’t be able to say it’s over here or over there. For God’s Commonwealth is inside you and around you now.”)
We are universalists. In our view, everyone who’s ever lived gets a seat at the celestial banquet table. We claim kinship in this belief with Anabaptist leader Hans Denck, Brethren leader Alexander Mack, and Quaker leader Elias Hicks, among many other universalists throughout history.
We oppose the proselytizing of non-Christians. For us, religious diversity is beautiful. It would be a shame if all Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Jews, Jains, Pagans, Pastafarians, etc., were converted to Christianity. So we reject evangelistic projects and missionary programs, no matter how well-meaning they claim to be. (Matthew 23:15: “Woe to you hypocrites! You scour land and sea to make a single convert. And when you do, you make that person more a child of Gehenna than you are.”)
We endorse the “Sermon on the Mount.” In particular the sayings identified by modern scholarship as most authentic. Especially the ones on the following themes: nonviolence, generosity, unconditional love, universalism, mercy, forgiveness, non-attachment to things, freedom from anxiety, non-judgment, and compassion.
We are pacifists, in the tradition of Bayard Rustin, Vincent Harding, Cesar Chavez, Dorothy Day, Mahatma Gandhi, Jeannette Rankin, Jane Addams, Leo Tolstoy, Adin Ballou, Lucretia Mott, George Fox, the nonviolent Anabaptists, and of course Jesus.
We are humanists, feminists, and freethinkers. We are gay, carefree, and fabulous.
We believe in art, evolution, revolution, relativity, synchronicity, serendipity, the scientific method, and puddy tats.
We value irreverence, outrageous-ness, and a strong cup of tea.
We don’t want to take ourselves too seriously. As someone once said: “God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.” For us, hilariousness is next to godliness.
(This declaration of the MMS is not a creed or doctrinal statement. It carries no weight of authority. We are anti-authority. The above “beliefs” are suggestions only. We could be wrong.)
The Pilgrim House 