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Our Beliefs
Our Beliefs
The sanctuary was founded in Christian Anarchist theology, which has the basic premise that our obligations to God, our neighbor, and God's creation outweighs any man-made obligations such as patriotism, capitalism, social order, or even rule of law.
Christian Anarchist theology rose from the same theological wellspring as Liberation Theology, Black Theology, Womanist Theology, Queer Theology, and Disabled Theology. This theological label aligns with the Sanctuary's three overarching beliefs: God is pure, unconditional Love; a fragment of God is in all living things; and Jesus Christ was God made manifest and our exemplar of perfect Christianity. These three core beliefs inform all our other beliefs. Here are three examples of our methodology:
Belief: The Bible is divinely inspired, but not inerrant.
Rationale: God is pure, unconditional love. Therefore, love is the lens through which we should read Scripture. Because not all parts of the Bible are loving (and there is a complex history of power and privilege surrounding who could author scripture and which of those were selected to be canonized), we recognize the Bible as divinely inspired, but neither literal nor inerrant.
B: Spreading the Gospel is about love and seeing God in the Other, not religious conversion.
R: A fragment of God is in all living things, yet the Bible was largely from one group of people from one geographic region. We uplift the Bible because we resonate most with it, but to recognize the divinity within all people, we must also recognize that all people (and spiritualities) are capable of capturing spiritual truths. Therefore, as long as someone holds a belief system that centers love, we serve the same universal Truth.
B: Christ calls us to always stand with the most marginalized.
R: Jesus Christ was God made manifest and our exemplar of perfect Christianity. Jesus manifested among the marginalized of his community and then used his ministry to repeatedly, constantly align himself with the marginalized rather than the religious or political elite of his time, all the way until he was executed by both the church and the state for heresy. Therefore, God has stated that God stands explicitly with the marginalized and to be Christlike is to center the marginalized as well.
We apply this same methodology to all other theological, political, and social issues we come across. From this method, we have come to the following five tenets:
We stand as staunch anti-war and anti-empire pacifists but, like Christ, civilly disobedient, struggling for the collective liberation and dignity of all.
We uphold the equality and sacredness of all people, regardless of race, color, gender, sexual orientation, dis/ability, religion, profession, or economic status.
We uplift marginalized voices in our theology, as it's the marginalized that Jesus aligned Himself with, yet they remain the least heard within organized religion and academia.
We demand justice for our planet, as God has breathed life into all living things but only humanity has been given a voice in our current ecocide.
And lastly, as a spiritual group, we seek to build a community of faith rather than a religious institution. God is a wild, unfathomable, and uncontainable Truth that cannot be confined -- and religions become idols when they position themselves as Truth's sole arbiters.
These five tenets force us to recognize a sixth pseudo-tenet: these beliefs are antithetical to Christian Nationalism, which holds a religious hegemony in America, so we accept our place as sacred deviants.
Why "Sacred Deviant"?
Why "Sacred Deviant"?
The term "sacred deviant" is inspired by Jesus and his closest followers in the gospel: upstarts that upset the church and empire, flippers of the tables of capitalism, breakers of laws and traditions to help others, and demonstrators who refused to sit quietly with the privileged. The sacred deviant is found in the shepherds, the tax collectors, the zealots, the sex workers, the blue collar fishermen, the Samaritan outcasts, the Roman empire traitors, the unmarried mothers, the immigrants and refugees, the broke and broken, the convicts, the fools, and the queers. It's for everyone on the margins who's been burned but still hasn't given up hope for a better world. It's a reminder that the ministry of Jesus gritty and subversive and radical. Jesus chose to surround himself with the people locked outside the temple. His message clear: we are sacred just as we are. This message extends back into the old testament as well, rooted deeply in the legacy of the prophets and extending all the way back to Moses. The story of the Bible is one of resistance, resilience, and collective liberation.
But most have never experienced the Bible like this. Many have been completely alienated from faith because they've only experienced cruelty, hypocrisy, and exclusion from Christian institutions. This isn't acceptable. So the sacred deviant isn't just an affirmation, but a charge: Resist. We have to set our faith apart, loudly and boldly, preaching unconditional love and inclusion as loudly as others preach the opposite. Together, we can make a brighter future.
May we collectively be a voice of holiness, a call to change, a balm to those who are hurting, a shield to those who are defenseless, a light of unconditional love, and vibrant stitches in the universe, each one of us stained with the Truth of our Creator. So it will be.
The Sanctuary was started to support American Christians, but is open to everyone, regardless of location or faith. SSD is unequivocally in support of other faith traditions, people of color, immigrants, women, workers, the LGBTQIA2S+ community, the ethically non-monogamous, the sexually liberated & sex workers, the disabled community, our indigenous peoples, refugees and victims of genocide, and our planet.
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