What We Believe

Holy Cross Anglican Church holds and confesses the historic faith of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, as received in the Anglican-Catholic tradition. We proclaim Jesus Christ as the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and we uphold the following essentials of the Christian faith:

1. Holy Scripture. We receive the canonical books of the Old and New Testaments as the inspired Word of God, containing all things necessary for salvation and serving as the final authority and unchangeable standard for Christian faith and life.
2. The Sacraments. We confess Holy Baptism and the Holy Eucharist to be Sacraments ordained by Christ Himself in the Gospel, to be ministered faithfully with the words and elements appointed by Him. We also uphold the remaining sacraments of the Church as means of grace to God’s people.
3. The Historic Episcopate. We affirm the godly historic Episcopate as part of the apostolic faith and order, essential to the unity and fullness of the Body of Christ.
4. The Creeds. We confess the faith summarized in the three ancient creeds of the undivided Church — the Apostles’, the Nicene, and the Athanasian — as true statements of the Christian faith.
5. The Councils. We affirm the doctrinal teaching of the first four Ecumenical Councils and the Christological clarifications of the fifth, sixth, and seventh, insofar as they are agreeable to Holy Scripture.
6. The Prayer Book Tradition. We receive the Book of Common Prayer, together with the Ordinal, as a standard for Anglican doctrine, discipline, and worship, drawing from the liturgical heritage of the English Reformation and the catholic faith of the early Church.
7. The Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion. We accept the Thirty-Nine Articles of 1571, taken in their plain and historical sense, as a faithful Anglican witness to the essential doctrines of the Christian faith.