We are Christians who love questions, mystery, and love more than certainty.
- We follow Jesus, believing him to be the agent of God’s mending, reconciling, and blessing the whole world by forgiveness, love, and respect of all people.
- We believe God has provided the world with many spiritual paths. As Christians we see God supremely revealed in Jesus, but we know that God has left “no people without a witness” to divine mercy, love, and the call to compassion and right relationships with others.
We are a Church that embraces the witness of catholicity, reformation, and renewal by the Holy Spirit.
- We trace our roots to the reformation of the English church in the early 1500's. The reformers translated the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer into the language of the people, trusting us to hear, read, study, and take to heart the words to lead us into an encounter with the living God and a life of faith and service.
- While the Church of England separated from the Roman Catholic Church, it maintained some Catholic traditions, especially in worship style, and embraced the witness to renewal, study, and preaching of the Reformation, and the call to discipleship and the priesthood of all believers.
- While the American Episcopal Church is part of the worldwide Anglican Communion, the second largest Christian body in the world, we recognize the gifts and witness of all churches and other communities of faith. We hope to be influenced by their gifts and witness to the power of the Holy Spirit to raise up new children of God, all building the ways of love and respect of all people.
We search for truth via scripture, tradition and reason.
- We seek answers to questions of faith by searching the Holy Scripture.
- We also look for guidance in all times and places, from teachings of Church fathers and mothers who struggled with many of our same questions.
- God has given us the ability to reason as we engage our questions about the Holy Scripture and Church Tradition. Our reason is influenced by both our mind and heart.
We love the Bible, and that means we are not biblical literalists.
We utilize historical, scholarly, scientific, and spiritual tools to see how God inspired fallible humans like us and is revealed through Scripture when it is read in love and with the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Episcopalians generally love, and are not threatened by, science.
We are people serving God, supported by deacons, pastors, and bishops.
- We believe all followers of Jesus are called to serve Christ in the world.
- Every member takes the teachings of Jesus into their workplaces, their homes and their communities.
- Deacons are the voice calling us into a life of serving the poor and those at the margins of society.
- Pastors/Priests teach and preach and lead worship and prayer, and guide the community spiritually, in partnership with lay leaders.
- Bishops are the chief pastors of a cluster of churches, united by a constitution of best practices, and blessed with the leadership of all members and other clergy. Our cluster is called a diocese, and it includes all the Episcopal congregations in Arizona.
Our mission is to restore all people to unity with God and each other, building up the ways of God on earth. This mission embraces diversity and won’t settle for division
Our Lord proclaimed the words of the prophet Isaiah,
"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."(LK4:18-19) As His body in the world, we dedicate our lives to this mission.