Gloucestershire Group Meeting – Is an open and affirming church possible?
Saturday 3 July 2021
It has been said the liberal Christians lack passion and that without more 'belief' a church would not survive. Is religion only for those with certainty?
- Start Date:
- Saturday 3rd July 2021
- Start Time:
- 2:30PM
- Location:
- via Zoom
- Phone:
- 07966 985339
- Email:
- andy.vivian@pcnbritain.org.uk
- Speakers:
- All of us
On the door of a church in Kent the PCC once posted the following notice. Is this pie in the sky? What problems will this church have to overcome?
We are an Open and Affirming Church which means that:
- You are welcome whatever your belief, even if you find organised religion irrelevant
- You are welcome whatever you lifestyle or sexuality
- You are welcome wherever you maybe on your faith journey: believer or agnostic, conventional Christian or questioning sceptic.
- You are welcome as an equal partner, and we look forward to the ideas and experiences that you can bring
- We welcome the variety of ways in which human beings have explored the sacred, and have no wish to promote just one approach to Christianity
- We think that the way treat one another is far more important than the beliefs we hold
- We think that it is vital to take seriously the intellectual problems which many people have with Christianity, and encourage ways of understanding religion which feed the mind as well as the soul
- We think that religion must be concerned with injustice and suffering, and see ourselves as a community helping to build a better world, bringing hope to those Jesus called the least of his sisters and brothers
- We recognise that our ignorance is always going to exceed our understanding, and find more grace in the search for meaning than in the claim to certainty
- We recognise that our faith entails costly discipleship and conscientious resistance of evil, as has always been the tradition of the Church.