A Minimalist Christian Faith

Having a minimalist approach to dogma is not the same as having a minimal faith. Faith is measured in conviction and trust, not in how many minute details one is choosing to believe arbitrarily. Dogmas are not in and of themselves bad, but too much dogma is very bad indeed. What would my church ask people to believe?

1) That there is a God. There must be something that is worthy of worship, and this must be accepted if one is to join as a full member any religious community that I led. You have to believe that worship makes sense if you are going to openly proclaim that people should worship with us.

2) That this God can be prayed to. Much of what God is would be left open, as God is first and foremost mystery, but whatever you believe God to be, you would believe that this God can reasonably be prayed to, as prayer is the center of what we would do.

3) That this God cares about what we do, and we should try to do what He wants us to. Any morally irrelevant faith is a dead faith. There must be a passion for doing the right thing, and a belief that this moral quest is grounded in God.

4) That Jesus Christ is a vital part of understanding and relating to God. The Incarnation would be the center of all we do and how we think about God and the world. Related to this would be a commitment to the Bible as a record of God's coming into the world.

5) That something is wrong with humanity that we cannot fix on our own, without divine assistance. A belief in sin is important if a religion is to have a center. Any faith must diagnose man's central problem and find some way to a cure or solution.

6) That in Jesus Christ or through Him, God brought about our salvation from this central problem. I believe in a salvific God, and in Christ as savior. That would be a central tenet of any church I led.

7) That this God remains with us in the form of the Holy Spirit, empowering the community to live as it should, and in the form of the suffering person, who we must help as a direct service to the living God.

And that is about it. There would be no judgment beyond these. Accept them and you can officially join 'the club', if you don't that is cool, that just won't work where I lead. Anyways, this is just a thought as I try to imagine what a church I might start in the future might look like.