Beliefs | Resurrection City DC

Resurrection City DC is a vibrant community dedicated more to following Jesus than to insisting on specific doctrinal statements. We understand God as a mystery to be explored and believe that our transformation comes as we do the hard work of pursuing the mysterious God through prayer, study of the Bible, worship, and the innumerable other disciplines of Christian formation. This sometimes means that we have more questions than answers, more skepticism than belief. Even in these moments, we continue to follow Jesus, allowing the community and the witness of Christians across time and space to carry us. Thus, we are content to stand in the long and powerful shadow of the early followers of Jesus who simplified their beliefs in the Apostle’s Creed:

I believe in God, the Father Almighty,
the Creator of heaven and earth,
and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord:
Who was conceived of the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried.
He descended to the dead.
The third day He arose again from the dead.
He ascended into heaven
and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty,
and He will come to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy *catholic church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting.

*catholic in this context simply means universal

In an attempt to acknowledge both that folks in our community believe a variety of things and that being transparent about the beliefs of our leaders is important, here’s a bit more to consider.

Pastor

Tonetta Landis-Aina

I believe that God is an uncreated Trinity and that, before anything else existed, Father, Spirit, and Son existed in mutually edifying, other-centered, self-giving love. This means that the foundation of all existence is a community of persons in loving relationship and that has everything to do with how Christians should engage their faith in the world. I believe that God created the world out of love and bestowed on it genuine freedom, which is after all, what love requires. I believe that human beings tend to cast off the other-centered, self-giving love that the Trinity models as the biblical stories of Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel try to illustrate. I think that when we cast off such love we make a mess of things, becoming alienated from God, ourselves, others, and creation. I believe that God sent the Spirit and then the Son into creation to liberate us. Jesus (the Son) modeled on earth the self-giving love of the Trinity in his life and death. While I think that no one model of atonement is sufficient, I do believe the death of Jesus on the cross was tied to this push for liberation rather than to a need to satisfy an angry God. I believe in the resurrection of Jesus and that the resurrection was the first fruits of a new creation. I believe that just as God sent the Spirit and the Son, God now sends the church into the world to model other-centered, self-giving love as well as to proclaim and create liberation. I believe that God invites each of us into the Trinitarian dance of love begun before the foundation of the world. I also believe that people who believe radically different things than me will feel the embrace of God in the new creation.

Our Beliefs