What We Believe

United Methodists share a common heritage with all Christians. According to our foundational statement of beliefs in The Book of Discipline, we share the following basic affirmations in common with all Christian communities:Trinity

We describe God in three persons. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are commonly used to refer to the threefold nature of God. Sometimes we use other terms, such as Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer.

Excerpt from What Every Teacher Needs to Know About Theology (Discipleship Resources, 2002), p. 13.

God

• We believe in one God, who created the world and all that is in it.
• We believe that God is sovereign; that is, God is the ruler of the universe.
• We believe that God is loving. We can experience God’s love and grace.

Excerpt from What Every Teacher Needs to Know About Theology (Discipleship Resources, 2002), p. 13.

Read more about our belief in God

Jesus

• We believe that Jesus was human. He lived as a man and died when he was crucified.
• We believe that Jesus is divine. He is the Son of God.
• We believe that God raised Jesus from the dead and that the risen Christ lives today. (Christ and messiah mean the same thing—God’s anointed.)
• We believe that Jesus is our Savior. In Christ we receive abundant life and forgiveness of sins.
• We believe that Jesus is our Lord and that we are called to pattern our lives after his.

Excerpt from What Every Teacher Needs to Know About Theology (Discipleship Resources, 2002), p. 13-14.

We believe the Bible to be the inspired, the only infallible, authoritative Word of God and inerrant in the original writings. We believe that there is one God, eternally existing in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We believe in the deity of our Lord Jesus Christ, in His virgin birth, in His sinless life, in His miracles, in His vicarious and atoning death through His shed blood, in His bodily resurrection, in His ascension to the right hand of the Father, and in His personal return in power and glory.

We believe that the lost and sinful man must be saved, and that man's only hope of redemption is through the shed blood of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. We believe in and practice the holy ordinance of water baptism, which signifies the believer's death, burial, and resurrection into new life with Christ Jesus, and the regular celebration of Holy Communion as commanded by our Lord.

We believe in the present ministry and baptism of the Holy Spirit, by whose indwelling the Christian is enabled to live a Godly life. We believe in the resurrection of both the saved and the unsaved; those that are saved into the resurrection of life and those that are unsaved into the resurrection of damnation.

We believe in the spiritual unity of believers in our Lord Jesus Christ.