Spiritual Results

Founding draft, September 2026; amended October 2026 at the direction of the Presiding Minister. The Statement of Faith belongs to the members. It is adopted with the Constitution and amended only by the process the Constitution requires.

1. The Source

We believe there is one Source of all that is, known by many names in many tongues: God, the Divine, the Tao, the Ground of Being, the Light. It is not owned by any tradition. Every wisdom tradition of humanity has seen some part of it, and we honor those traditions as witnesses, not as rivals.

2. The sovereignty of conscience

We believe each person stands before the Source directly. No priest, institution, or state stands between a soul and its Maker. Conscience, informed by wisdom and tested in community, is the seat of religious authority in a person's life. For this reason we impose no creed beyond this Statement, we coerce no one, and we ask of every member only sincerity.

3. Inalienable rights

We believe that the rights of every person to life, liberty, and property are inalienable. They come from the Source, not from any government, and so no government can grant them, license them, or take them away. What does not come from this earth cannot be approved by anyone on it.

The founders of the United States said the same thing when they wrote that all are endowed by their Creator with unalienable rights, and that governments are instituted among men to secure those rights, not to bestow them. The Constitution of the United States forbids any government to deprive a person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, and forbids any law prohibiting the free exercise of religion. We recognize and follow those rights. We hold them as articles of faith before they are articles of law, and we would hold them if the law fell silent.

4. Do that which is right

We believe the whole of religion can be carried in one instruction, found in every tradition: do that which is right. Love your neighbor as yourself. Do not do to others what you would not have done to you. Tell the truth. Keep your word. Care for the weak. Forgive. What is right is not always easy to see, which is why we gather, study, and counsel one another.

5. Results

We believe faith is known by its fruit. Spiritual practice that does not change a life is not yet practice. We measure our religion not by what we profess but by what it produces in us: peace, honesty, courage, generosity, self-command, and love. This is why the Church bears the name it bears.

6. Practice

We practice our faith by:

Gathering regularly as a congregation, because the presence of one another is the ordinary means by which the Source works on us;
Contemplation, prayer, and silence;
Study of the sacred and wisdom texts of humanity, read with reverence and with an open mind;
Rites that mark the passages of life: the blessing of a child, the joining of two lives in marriage, the dedication of a home or a work, the honoring of the dead, the reception of a member, the setting apart of a minister;
Service to one another and to those in need.

7. Stewardship

We believe all that we hold is held in trust. We live within our means. The Church owns what it holds and owes no one, because a debtor is not free. The Church takes no money from any government, because the hand that feeds also leads. What is given to the Church is given to the Source and is used for the Source's work, never for the private gain of any person.

8. Independence and obedience

We believe the authority of the Church proceeds from the Source and from the conscience of its members, not from any state. Because our rights are inalienable, and because the Church's authority was never the state's to give, the Church has not asked, and will not ask, any government to approve its existence, its faith, its worship, its membership, or its ministers. We have not sought the approval of the Internal Revenue Service or of any other agency, and we do not need it. A government cannot approve what it never had the authority to grant.

The law of the United States itself acknowledges this. A church exists, and is exempt, by operation of law, without application to anyone; and the courts have held for more than a century that no civil authority may decide what a church believes, whom it receives, or whom it ordains. We accept no license or charter as the condition of our existence, because none is required and none could be given.

And we believe, with every tradition we honor, that we are to render to civil authority what is civil authority's. Where government acts within its lawful authority, we obey the laws of general application, we pay what is lawfully owed, and we claim no immunity that the law does not give. Our freedom is not exemption from the law. It is that no state can tell us what to believe, whom to receive, whom to ordain, or how to worship, because no state ever had the authority to.

9. Ministry

We believe that ministers are set apart by the Church for the service of the Church, after study, formation, and examination, and that they remain servants and not masters. Ordination in this Church is conferred by the Church, is recorded by the Church, and may be withdrawn by the Church.

10. The wider fellowship

We believe we are one small congregation among the countless communities of faith on the earth, and we wish them well. We are not a denomination, we seek no converts from other churches, and we hold that a person may be nourished by more than one well.

Affirmed by the founding members at the organizational meeting of the Church, [DATE].