As United Methodists, there is much that we share in common with our Christian brothers and sisters of many different denominations around the world. We profess our belief in the triune God - meaning that we know God as Father (our Creator), Son (Jesus Christ, our Redeemer), and Holy Spirit (our Sustainer). As surely as we know that God is Love, we know that we are so often not as loving as ought to be. We know that we are not perfect - that all people are broken, and that we all fall short of God's glory and sin against God and against our neighbor. But we trust that God is at work in the world and in our lives, and that we cannot be separated from God's grace that has been shown to us in Jesus.

What follows are some basic Christian affirmations - statements that we have experienced to be true in our journeys of faith. The words in bold are taken directly from The Book of Discipline, the book that United Methodists use to guide our life together.

We hold in common with all Christians a faith in the mystery of salvation in and through Jesus Christ. Because we believe that Jesus was God Incarnate - God in flesh, living as one of us - we look to Jesus to understand who God is, and who God calls us to be. We also believe that in Jesus' death on the cross and in his resurrection offer us salvation. In the cross, we know that Jesus shares with us the suffering brought on by human sinfulness. In the resurrection, we hear God's good news: sin and death and suffering do not have the last word. God is the One whose love and grace triumph over death.

We share the Christian belief that God's redemptive love is realized in human life by the activity of the Holy Spirit, both in personal experience and in the community of believers. We trust that God is found not only in the past, and not only in words that were written long ago. God still speaks to us - that is the on-going work of the Holy Spirit. In this way, we can enjoy a relationship with a living God.

We understand ourselves to be part of Christ's universal church when by adoration, proclamation, and service we become conformed to Christ. The whole world over, Christians gather together to worship God, to preach the good news of God's grace, and to love and serve their neighbors. We do this because we trust that, as we do these things, the Holy Spirit will help to re-create us into the people that God created us to be - people whose lives mirror Christ's love.

With other Christians we recognize that the reign of God is both a present and future reality. We trust that God is already at work in the world. To the extent that we see people changed by God's love - caring for their neighbors, caring for God's creation, living lives that bear witness to grace - to that extent, we know that God's reign is already here. And yet, we witness great sin and suffering in the world - and we know that so long as people hunger for food and for compassion, so long as people are harmed in their living rooms or on the battlefield, so long as we witness cruelty of any kind... so long as we and our world are broken, we know that God's reign is not yet complete. We look to the future with hope, even as we grieve the brokenness we experience.

If you'd like, you can read UMC.org's entry on our Christian roots.