What we Stand For

By James A. Garfield*

1. We call ourselves Christians, or Disciples of Christ.
2. We believe in God the Father.
3. We believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, and our Savior. We regard the divinity of Christ as the fundamental truth of the Christian system.
4. We believe in the Holy Spirit, both as to His agency in conversion and as indwelling in the heart of the Christian.
5. We accept both the Old and the New Testament Scriptures as the inspired Word of God.
6. We believe in the future punishment of the wicked and the future reward of the righteous.
7. We believe that the Deity is a prayer-hearing and prayer-answering God.
8. We observe the institution of the Lord's Supper on the Lord's Day. To this table we neither invite nor debar; we say it is the Lord's Supper for all of the Lord's children.
9. We plead for the union of God's people on the Bible and the Bible alone.
10. The Christ is our only creed.
11. We maintain that all the ordinances should be observed as they were in the days of the apostles.

* James A. Garfield, 20^th president of the United States was the last of our "log cabin" presidents. He was the first person associated with Christian Churches / Churches of Christ to become a US President.  During much of his life he served as a "lay preacher"   As the "principled reformer" Congressman became well-known during the post-Civil War period, he was asked many times about the group of believers with whom he worshiped.  This classic statement was his answer.  Sadly he was assassinated by a disgruntled patronage seeker in 1881, his first year as President, too soon to put any of his "decency" reforms into practice.  Another facet of the man was his mathematics skill.  He developed the "trapezoid proof" of the Pythagorean Theorem.

Used with permission of Christian Standard. Copyright article 1st appeared, April 11, 2005.
The Standard Publishing Company, Cincinnati, Ohio.  Visit us on the Web at www.standardpub.com.