Beliefs
The Bible
The Uniting Church in Australia reads the Bible as sacred text. The Bible is a collection of Hebrew and Greek writings (Old and New Testaments). We believe they are are unique prophetic and apostolic testimony. We hear the Word of God. Our faith and obedience is nourished and regulated by the Bible. We have a serious duty to read the Scriptures.
See Paragraph 5 of The Basis of Union
Creeds and Confessions
Through history, God’s people have developed statements of faith. We read the Nicene and Apostles’ creeds (4th Century and 5th Century) and use them in worship. We also study the Scots Confession of Faith (1647), the Savoy Declaration (1658), and John Wesley’s Forty Four Sermons (1793). These confessions help us to see how the faith of the Church has developed over centuries. The Church says ongoing study and the development of deeper thinking is important. So, we study theology, literature, history and science. The UCA's Basis of Union (1971, 1994) brings together these writings and traditions and sets out the church's way of living and being.
See Paragraphs 9-10 of The Basis of Union
Contemporary Faith
The Uniting Church believes that God brings us into right relationship with God. God does this through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
In faith we can:
UNITING CHURCH IN AUSTRALIA
澳大利亚联合教会
The Uniting Church in Australia is the third largest Christian denomination in Australia and the first church to be created in and of Australia. On any Sunday more than 2,000 congregations worship at a Uniting Church. Many congregations worship in different languages. Our churches can be found in cities, in isolated places and outback towns. Some congregations are 200 years old. Others are new and worship in different ways. Our congregations can be very different. Each congregation is a community where people seek to follow Jesus, learn about God, share their faith, care for each other, serve the local community and seek to live faithfully and with real joy.
At Eastwood Uniting Church, we believe: God loves all people, God loves creation. We are from many languages and countries. Some of us have had many years of Christian faith. Some of us have only learnt about Jesus Christ recently. We want to share our journey of following God with others. We want to work together to share God’s peace, love and goodness in the world.
Got questions?
Do you have questions about what we believe at Eastwood Uniting?
Get in touch with a person on our leader team directly by filling in the form below.
The Uniting Church in Australia reads the Bible as sacred text. The Bible is a collection of Hebrew and Greek writings (Old and New Testaments). We believe they are are unique prophetic and apostolic testimony. We hear the Word of God. Our faith and obedience is nourished and regulated by the Bible. We have a serious duty to read the Scriptures.
See Paragraph 5 of The Basis of Union
Creeds and Confessions
Through history, God’s people have developed statements of faith. We read the Nicene and Apostles’ creeds (4th Century and 5th Century) and use them in worship. We also study the Scots Confession of Faith (1647), the Savoy Declaration (1658), and John Wesley’s Forty Four Sermons (1793). These confessions help us to see how the faith of the Church has developed over centuries. The Church says ongoing study and the development of deeper thinking is important. So, we study theology, literature, history and science. The UCA's Basis of Union (1971, 1994) brings together these writings and traditions and sets out the church's way of living and being.
See Paragraphs 9-10 of The Basis of Union
Contemporary Faith
The Uniting Church believes that God brings us into right relationship with God. God does this through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
In faith we can:
- live in a close, loving, personal, dynamic relationship with the living God;
- participate in the worshipping, caring and serving community of Christians;
- receive God's gifts so that life can be what God means it to be - loving, purposeful, joyful, eternal; and
- tell others of this good news and live it out in acts of compassion, service and justice in the community.
UNITING CHURCH IN AUSTRALIA
澳大利亚联合教会
The Uniting Church in Australia is the third largest Christian denomination in Australia and the first church to be created in and of Australia. On any Sunday more than 2,000 congregations worship at a Uniting Church. Many congregations worship in different languages. Our churches can be found in cities, in isolated places and outback towns. Some congregations are 200 years old. Others are new and worship in different ways. Our congregations can be very different. Each congregation is a community where people seek to follow Jesus, learn about God, share their faith, care for each other, serve the local community and seek to live faithfully and with real joy.
At Eastwood Uniting Church, we believe: God loves all people, God loves creation. We are from many languages and countries. Some of us have had many years of Christian faith. Some of us have only learnt about Jesus Christ recently. We want to share our journey of following God with others. We want to work together to share God’s peace, love and goodness in the world.
Got questions?
Do you have questions about what we believe at Eastwood Uniting?
Get in touch with a person on our leader team directly by filling in the form below.
Preamble to the UCA Constitution
The Church in accordance with the Basis of Union acknowledges that the demand of the Gospel,
the response of the Church to the Gospel and the discipline which it requires are partly expressed
in the formulation by the Church of its law, the aim of which is to confess God’s will for the life of Christ’s Church.
As the Church believes God guided it into union so it believes that God is calling it to continually seek a renewal of its life as a community of First Peoples and of Second Peoples from many lands, and as part of that to recognise that:
1. When the churches that formed the Uniting Church arrived in Australia as part of the process of colonisation
they entered a land that had been created and sustained by the Triune God they knew in Jesus Christ.
2. Through this land God had nurtured and sustained the First Peoples of this country, the Aboriginal and Islander peoples, who continue to understand themselves to be the traditional owners and custodians (meaning ‘sovereign’ in the languages of the First Peoples) of these lands and waters since time immemorial.
3. The First Peoples had already encountered the Creator God before the arrival of the colonisers; the Spirit was already in the land revealing God to the people through law, custom and ceremony. The same love and grace that was finally and fully revealed in Jesus Christ sustained the First Peoples and gave them particular insights into God’s ways.
4. Some members of the uniting churches approached the First Peoples with good intentions, standing with them in the name of justice; considering their well being, culture and language as the churches proclaimed the reconciling purpose of the Triune God found in the good news about Jesus Christ.
5. Many in the uniting churches, however, shared the values and relationships of the emerging colonial society including paternalism and racism towards the First Peoples. They were complicit in the injustice that resulted in many of the First Peoples being dispossessed from their land, their language, their culture and spirituality, becoming strangers in their own land.
6. The uniting churches were largely silent as the dominant culture of Australia constructed and propagated a distorted version of history that denied this land was occupied, utilised, cultivated and harvested by these First Peoples who also had complex systems of trade and inter-relationships. As a result of this denial, relationships were broken and the very integrity of the Gospel proclaimed by the churches was diminished.
7. From the beginning of colonisation the First Peoples challenged their dispossession and the denial of their proper place in this land. In time this was taken up in the community, in the courts, in the parliaments, in the way history was recorded and told, and in the Uniting Church in Australia.
8. In 1985 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander members of the Uniting Church in Australia formed the Uniting Aboriginal and Islander Christian Congress.
9. In 1988 the Uniting Aboriginal and Islander Christian Congress invited the other members of the Church to join in a solemn act of covenanting before God.
10. After much struggle and debate, in 1994 the Assembly of the Uniting Church in Australia discovered God’s call, accepted this invitation and entered into an ever deepening covenantal relationship with the Uniting Aboriginal and Islander Christian Congress. This was so that all may see a destiny together, praying and working together for a fuller expression of our reconciliation in Jesus Christ.
AND THUS the Church celebrates this Covenantal relationship as a foretaste of that coming reconciliation and renewal which is the end in view for the whole creation.
修订于2009年第12届全国联盟代表大会 assembly.uca.org.au; uaicc.org.au
As revised at the 12th Assembly 2009 assembly.uca.org.au uaicc.org.au
译者注:
1. 本《宪法导言》中的“第一民族”指澳大利亚土地上的原住民和托雷斯海峡岛民,“第二民族”包括所有后来定居澳大利亚的移民。
Translator’s note:In the Preamble, “the First Peoples” refers to Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders as the original residents of the land in Australia, and “the Second Peoples” include all migrants later arrived in Australia.
2. 联合教会把后宗派的特点看成是一种教会运动,而不是另一个新的宗派。民族之间的和好为将来整个世界更新中的一部分,所以把教会的团契 “as a community of” 翻译成“成为第一民族和来自各国第二民族共有的教会运动“。
The Uniting Church affirms the church as a movement of God’s People, not another newdenomination. Reconciliation between the peoples is part of future renewal of the whole creation. Therefore, the term “as a community” is translated as “a church movement” of First Peoples and of Second Peoples from many lands”. 1
As revised at the 12th Assembly 2009 assembly.uca.org.au uaicc.org.au
译者注:
1. 本《宪法导言》中的“第一民族”指澳大利亚土地上的原住民和托雷斯海峡岛民,“第二民族”包括所有后来定居澳大利亚的移民。
Translator’s note:In the Preamble, “the First Peoples” refers to Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders as the original residents of the land in Australia, and “the Second Peoples” include all migrants later arrived in Australia.
2. 联合教会把后宗派的特点看成是一种教会运动,而不是另一个新的宗派。民族之间的和好为将来整个世界更新中的一部分,所以把教会的团契 “as a community of” 翻译成“成为第一民族和来自各国第二民族共有的教会运动“。
The Uniting Church affirms the church as a movement of God’s People, not another newdenomination. Reconciliation between the peoples is part of future renewal of the whole creation. Therefore, the term “as a community” is translated as “a church movement” of First Peoples and of Second Peoples from many lands”. 1
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