Statement of Faith

Here you can find my personal statement of faith. I believe that any statement of faith is always somewhat provisional. Over time, especially currently as I am still in school, this will get many small tweaks and maybe the occasional large one.

In general, however, I have found myself able to label much of my thought with the phrase "emerging-Anabaptist". Many of my theological understandings line up with those of the Anabaptist tradition such as the radical understanding of discipleship embodied in such things as nonviolence. Consequently, the general framework of this statement began with the Mennonite Confession of Faith and for the most part has remained close to that. I add the adjective "emerging" as I also identify with many of the themes of the emerging church, maintaining central dogma believed since the beginning of the church, but also seeking to reform and revive the church in the early stages of the postmodern era.

Part of what brought me to this concise summary of my theological forms was from using the classifications of Christianity as described by Phyllis Tickle in Chapter 6 of The Great Emergence: How Christianity is Changing and Why. I would plot my own theological location with the diagram to the left. Tickle begins by explaining the four quadrants of Christianity: Liturgicals, Social Justice Christians, Renewalists, and Conservatives. Although she does not directly include the mapping of Anabaptism, I think we belong somewhere in between Social Justice Christians (strong emphasis on social action as an expression of faith) and Conservatives (strong sense of biblical authority). Tickle then adds the emerging church as the conversation occuring at the centre of the four quadrants, and then adds the stages between the "reactionaries" (on the corners) and the emerging church (at the centre). These stages are Traditionalists, Re-Traditionalists, Progressives, and Hyphenateds. I would consider myself a Hyphenated: very much on board with the emerging church movement, but still preferring to maintain Anabaptist as my primary identifier.