At Fellowship we have a wide diversity of beliefs about God, about religion and about Jesus. Very few of us were actually raised in The United Church of Christ, we come from all kinds of backgrounds – Catholic, Baptist, Pentecostal, Presbyterian, Methodist, Quaker, Unitarian, agnostic and ‘none of the above’.
We’re organized around an including faith that takes the Christian tradition seriously without needing it to be superior to any other faith tradition. We value compassion, community, honest questions, and meaningful dialogue about the mysteries of living life.
We’re less interested in establishing absolute agreement and more interested in our common search for the good and beautiful in the world. We value good community, good work, and good food!
We are an Open & Affirming congregation
This means that we specifically and intentionally seek full participation from people who identify on the LGBTQ+ spectrum. That is a particularly important position here in the heart of the Bible Belt, where many have been wounded by past church experiences. We have also dedicated ourselves as an antiracist congregation, meaning that we are committed to the difficult and uncomfortable work of not only confronting the structures of white supremacy in our community, but also addressing our own racism.
We are a proud member of the United Church of Christ, a collection of churches with centuries of dedication to social justice and human rights, though certainly not without its own blind spots and failures.
The UCC is the first mainstream Christian denomination in the US to ordain a black man, Rev. Lemuel Haynes in 1785, the first to ordain a woman, Rev. Antoinette Brown in 1853, and the first to ordain an openly gay man, Rev. Bill Johnson, in 1972.
We were instrumental in the abolition movement and the civil rights movement. We promoted equality in marriage over 10 years ago and recently took a stand by moving towards divesting ourselves of financial investment in the fossil fuel industry.
For more information on our denomination, visit the United Church of Christ website.