What We Believe
As heirs of the Protestant Reformation, we place a high value on theological depth and clarity. We want to honor Jesus rightly by loving him with our minds.
Below, you will find a brief summary of what it means to be an Anglican church.
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We are a Christian church
Together with Christians throughout the ages, we worship the Triune God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We thank God for the rich heritage of the church from the last two millennia, and we joyfully affirm the historic Christian creeds –
The Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed, the Athanasian Creed, and the Chalcedonian Definition.
We are a Reformed and Reformational church
We are also a “Reformed” or “Reformational,” refering to the 16th-century Reformation led by Martin Luther, Thomas Cranmer and John Calvin. The Reformation was a movement to reform the doctrine and worship of the late-medieval church by returning to the authority of the Scriptures. As heirs of the Reformation, we claim to be the heirs of the One, Holy, Catholic (Universal), and Apostolic church.
We are grateful to stand in the vibrant tradition of the Protestant Reformation, when many vital aspects of the Bible’s teaching were rediscovered. In particular, we find much of the Bible’s teaching to be well expressed in the great confession of the English Reformation, the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion.
A proper term for Anglicans might be “Reformed Catholics.” We reject the abuses and theological errors of Rome. By “re-forming,” we aim to stand in the faith of the early church as was conceived by the Church Fathers.
We are an Evangelical church
The word “evangelical” comes from a Greek word meaning “gospel” or “good news”. As an evangelical church we are committed to the content, proclamation, and demonstration of the good news about Jesus: his life, death, resurrection, ascension, present reign, and future return in glory.
As an evangelical church, we believe that the Bible is God’s word, and therefore our ultimate authority in every area of life. We seek to understand and apply the ancient words of Scripture as the Lord’s wisdom to every aspect of the modern world.
Our Affiliations
Our church is part of the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA), a province of the third-largest branch of Christianity. Within the ACNA, we are part of a diocese (united gathering of local church parishes) called the Anglican Diocese of the Living Word
Positions on Cultural Issues
Women's Ordination
At Glory of God and in the Anglican Diocese of the Living Word, we view the ordination of women to the priesthood (ie, to become pastors/elders/presbyters) to be an accretion not found historically within the Church or in line with the teachers of Holy Scripture. As such, we deny that the ordination of women to the pastorate is a wise or Biblical move and stand against the recent innovation of women’s ordination.
You may find a fuller argument presented by the diocese here.
Abortion and the Sanctity of Life
We wholly profess that the unborn and the infirm, being Image Bearers of the Most Holy God, are worthy of life. The unjustified taking of life is murder and has no Scriptural warrant. Therefore, we confess that abortion, euthanasia, and all forms of taking life in an unjustified manner are murder. We are pro-life and seek to uphold the dignity of all human life.
Sexuality and Sexual Identity
We affirm the Biblical mandate for and the goodness of marriage as the union between a man and a woman. The Lord provided marriage to us for the purpose of demonstrating sacrificial love and for the purpose of fulfilling the creation mandate of multiplying and filling the earth with human life. Same-sex relationships cannot fulfill this God ordained role naturally and must, on principle, be rejected as a proper application of human sexuality.
Transgenderism, likewise, is a misunderstanding of the goodness of the body. God, foreordaining each human life, has predestined in eternity past who each individual would be. To view oneself as misaligned with their body from birth is to misunderstand God’s sovereignty in the world.
A fuller description of the position from the diocese can be found here.