Beliefs

Welcome to our parish! Each week we come together as people of various abilities, races, ethnicities, socioeconomic groups, gender identities, sexual orientations, marital status and political beliefs to strive toward reflection and action, acceptance and growth, Gospel and World. We are delighted to have you join our worship, bringing yourself and your gifts to our gathering.

Roots

Our worship and sacramental life deeply reflect our Roman Catholic roots; however, our theology is a blend of Catholic and Reformed perspectives. For example:

• We affirm the presence of Christ in communion but we do not spell out theologically how that happens.

• We maintained the basic order of the Catholic Mass as we were undergoing reform in the sixteenth century, but we began to pray in English rather than in Latin.

Central Beliefs Today

We believe in the critical importance of baptism. We believe:

• We enter into a covenant with God when we are baptized,

• Our baptismal covenant is renewed repeatedly during our lifetimes.

As part of this covenant we affirm God as Trinity: 

• as Father, Son and Holy Spirit,

• as our Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier.

We come to know this God through Christ’s community, the Church.  Our God is not limited to the Church but is present throughout creation. God is manifest in the physical world, in ways we can know and experience. 

We understand that in our covenant with God at baptism, we undertake responsibilities: 

• to participate in the church community

• to carry the Good News we know in Jesus with us wherever we go, “seeking and serving Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves.”

Key to this commitment is to “strive for justice and peace among all people, respecting the dignity of every human being.” We live into this commitment in many ways. The Episcopal Church:

• has a long tradition of working for social justice within our body.

• often supports feeding ministries, such as the Food Pantry St. Mark's on the Campus runs in collaboration with the other Episcopal churches in Lincoln.

• has been at the forefront of women’s ministries and have grappled with issues of sexuality for decades, visibly living out our commitment to equal rights, opportunities and responsibilities for the LGBT community both within the church community and in our larger society.

These areas are but a few of the ways in which the Episcopal Church gives witness in the social arena to our faith in the redeeming power of God in Jesus Christ for all people.