About Our Church

The people of Shiloh-Sixth Avenue United Church are progressive and radically inclusive followers of Jesus seeking God's healing and transformation for ourselves and our world.  What is Progressive Theology?  By calling ourselves progressive, we mean that we are Christians who? 1. Have found our approach to God through the person, life and teachings and person of Jesus; 2. Recognize the faithfulness of, and respect others who have other names for the way to God's realm;   3. Understand the sharing of bread and wine in Jesus' name (communion) to be a representation of an ancient vision of God's feast for all peoples (and thus have a communion table which is open to all);   4. Invite all people to participate in our community and worship life without insisting that they become like us in order to be acceptable (including but not limited to):   - believers and agnostics,   - conventional Christians and questioning skeptics,   - women and men,   - those of all sexual orientations and  gender identities,   - those of all races and cultures,   - those of all classes and abilities,   - those who hope for a better world and those who have lost hope;   5. Know that the way we behave toward one another and toward other people is the fullest expression of what we believe;   6. Find more grace in the search for understanding than we do in dogmatic certainty - more value in questioning than in absolutes;   7. Form ourselves into communities dedicated to equipping one another for the work we feel called to do: striving for peace and justice among all people, protecting and restoring the integrity of all God's creation, and bringing hope to those Jesus called the least of his sisters and brothers; and   8. Recognize that being followers of Jesus is costly, and entails selfless love, conscientious resistance to evil, and renunciation of privilege.   9. Take the Scriptures of our faith seriously, but not literally; seeking to understand them within their cultural, historical, literary context as well as our own.