About us

We are a community of faith witnessing to God’s love and grace for persons of every race, gender, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, nationality, ethnicity, marital status, physical or mental ability, political stance and theological perspective. As agents of reconciliation and wholeness, we pledge to stand against all forms of discrimination and to embrace all who are disenfranchised from church and community. Together in our diversity and empowered and guided by the Holy Spirit, we are committed to "do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our God" (Micah 6:8)

We live in a culture that is deeply conflicted about sexuality.

Our religious heritage compels and guides us in creating a safe environment where people can come to understand and respond to the challenges facing them as sexual beings. As a faith community, we promote justice for all people and we affirm the dignity of every individual, the importance of personal responsibility, and the essential interdependence of all peoples.

As Christians, we profess that we are created in the image of God. In this image, we make a lifelong journey toward deeper faith, faithfulness, and wholeness. As a church, we seek continually to integrate God’s ongoing revelation with new knowledge and understandings of our lives and times. In our religious education, we seek to equip the faithful for this journey in all its possibilities.

We affirm that sexuality and spirituality are intricately connected and that both are gifts from God.

The following principles of the United Church of Christ express what the people of New Church believe about faith, spirituality, sexuality, and justice:

- Sexuality is a God-given gift.

- The purposes of sexuality are to enhance human wholeness and fulfillment, to express love, commitment, delight, and pleasure, to bring new life into the world, and to give glory to God.

When making decisions about sexuality, the primary guide is God’s call to love and justice as revealed in both Testaments.

- From a biblical perspective, sexuality is intended to express mutuality, love, and justice. In judging whether behavior is ethical or unethical, the norms of mutuality, love, and justice are the central criteria.

- From a biblical perspective, sexuality is distorted by unethical behaviors, attitudes, and systems that foster violence, exploitation, infidelity, assertion of power, and the treatment of persons as objects.

- In developing a just sexual morality, we need to avoid double standards and avoid using heterosexual and cisgender people, experiences, and relationships as normative for all people.

A responsible and mature sexual ethic respects the moral agency of every person. When faced with ethical decisions, each of us needs to be accorded the freedom and responsibility to choose.

- The church, at all levels, ought to be a context for discussion about human sexuality.

The church ought to encourage and support advocacy with those who society, and even the church itself, have sexually oppressed or made the victims of sexual violence and abuse.