What We Believe

Our Living Articles of Faith

The following principles set forth by the Reform Mormons are not offered as an infallible creed, but as a present statement of who we are, what we have received, and what we seek to become.

We claim the Mormon tradition as a living inheritance. We preserve what enlarges agency, knowledge, justice, love, and joy while rejecting what produces coercion, ignorance, exclusion, and harm. We commit to remaining open to further light and knowledge, and as new truths are discovered and better understanding is attained, these articles should be revised.

1. Light and Knowledge

We believe everyone has the right and responsibility to seek truth wherever it may be found – in reason, science, experience, tradition, art, scripture, and revelation. Because no person, book, church, or tradition possesses the fullness of truth, every belief must remain open to correction. We believe spiritual gifts can and do occur, but that spiritual maturity, intellectual growth, and moral discernment matter more than visions, revelations, or other manifestations, and that no spiritual claim can overrule reason, evidence, learning, or moral judgment. Faith is the creative trust that moves us toward a hoped-for future, while doubt invites us to inquire more deeply.

2. Scripture as Sacred Art

We believe scripture is human-made sacred art; a record of people reaching toward truth, interpreting revelation, and giving form to their encounters with the Divine. It may contain history and myth, poetry and prose, moral insight and human error. Because every scripture is shaped by its writers’ minds, experiences, cultures, and limitations, no text is infallible, final, or adequately understood through literalism alone.

3. Continuing and Personal Revelation

We believe revelation continues and is available to every person. It may come through study, reflection, imagination, conscience, spiritual feeling, judgment, and creative labor. No prophet, priest, officer, or institution possesses greater inherent authority than another to speak for God. Every revelation must be tested by reason, evidence, conscience, its consequences, and its power to enlarge agency, knowledge, justice, love, and joy. We judge the prophet by the revelation, not the revelation by the prophet.

4. Freedom of Worship

We believe every person has the right to worship – or not to worship – how, where, or what they may. Theists, polytheists, pantheists, and non-theists may all participate fully in Reform Mormonism. What matters most is not uniformity of belief, language, or sacred story, but what our beliefs bring forth in the way we live.

5. Humanity and Divinity

We believe humanity and divinity share a common nature. God is not a wholly different order of being, but an expression of what humanity may fully become. We therefore understand every person as divine in nature and potential. We honor Jesus as our tradition’s central teacher and exemplar of Divine humanity, while leaving the nature of Jesus and the meaning of his mission to individual conscience.

6. Sacred Worth and Full Equality

We believe every person possesses equal and sacred worth, regardless of race, ethnicity, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, disability, class, religion, family structure, or social standing. Each person has the authority to know and name their own identity and the right to be treated with dignity. Human diversity is not a defect to be overcome, but one of the great glories of creation.

7. Agency

We believe every person is a free moral agent, with both the right and the responsibility to direct their own life according to their conscience, reason, experience, and revelation. Meaningful agency requires more than freedom from coercion; it also requires the knowledge, capacity, and material conditions necessary to make genuine choices. No person, church, government, scripture, or claim of Divine authority has a right to demand unthinking obedience or exercise control, dominion, or compulsion over another. Agency also entails accountability: we must accept the consequences of our choices, repair the harm we cause, and respect the agency, consent, safety, and flourishing of others.

8. Eternal Progression

We believe in the never-ending goal of attaining further knowledge, virtue, freedom, creativity, relationship, competence, and joy. “Salvation” and “exaltation” are names of states of being in this process of becoming, not rewards conferred by a leader, ordinance, church, or creed. We reject eternal condemnation and any theology that makes fear the foundation of religion. The details of pre-mortal and post-mortal existences remain open to personal exploration.

9. Priesthood of All

We believe priesthood is the authority people entrust to one another to minister on behalf of the Divine. All are called according to their gifts and bear a responsibility to cultivate the knowledge, character, and skills necessary to use them well. Genuine priesthood authority is demonstrated through moral integrity, spiritual insight, practical competence, and effective service – not through title, office, tradition, or institutional succession. Ordination may publicly recognize a person’s ministry, but it does not create their authority; priesthood offices should describe the service a person already imparts rather than prescribe who is permitted to serve.

10. Ordinances as Living Symbols

We believe ordinances are sacred, human-created works of symbolic art. Their power arises from the intention, understanding, Spirit, and mutual covenant participants bring to them – not from legalistic precision or an exclusive chain of authority. Sacrament, baptism, confirmation, ordination, endowment, washing, anointing, blessing, sealing, and other ordinances may be adapted or newly created to serve those who freely choose them. Any person trusted by the participants may officiate. No ordinance is required for salvation or exaltation, nor is any proxy ordinance necessary to save or exalt the dead.

11. Families

We believe all families deserve equal dignity, rights, and protection, and that adult relationships should be grounded in free and informed consent, honesty, mutual respect, care, and love. Families may be monogamous or non-monogamous, include people of any gender, and be formed through birth, adoption, and choice. Those who undertake the care of children assume a sacred responsibility to protect them, nurture their growth, and provide for their physical, emotional, and spiritual needs. We hold that the loving relationships formed in this life may endure throughout the eternities.

12. Ancestors

We believe death need not sever the bonds between generations or loved ones. Our ancestors may include biological and adoptive forebears, chosen kin, and those from whom we inherit spiritual, cultural, communal, or vocational lineages. Whether understood as continuing spirits, exalted gods, or sacred memory, the dead may be honored through genealogy, storytelling, prayer, offerings, tending graves or shrines, and rituals of remembrance. These practices do not save or exalt the dead, but turn our hearts toward them and, we hope, their hearts toward us. Through these practices, we seek to strengthen eternal kindred ties, learn from their lives, and participate together in Eternal Progression. Our ancestors are neither infallible nor entitled to obedience or veneration merely because they came before us, and no one is obligated to honor an ancestor who harmed them. We may honor their virtues, grieve their suffering, tell the truth about their wrongs, and repair the harms they left behind.

13. Voluntary Community and Common Consent

We believe the church is a people, not an institution. Anyone who embraces Eternal Progression and strives to cultivate Divine virtues may rightfully be considered a part of our community, regardless of whether they gather or remain in solitude. Reform Mormonism is principally home-centered and may take shape wherever people freely assemble for worship, study, ritual, service, friendship, art, or common work. The authority of every gathering arises from the common consent of those involved. Offices exist only to serve and must remain limited, accountable, and subject to alteration or recall. No leader, council, institution, or majority may dictate private belief; institutions exist to serve people, not people to serve institutions.

14. Zion

We believe in building Zion – communities where the people are of one heart and one mind, where there are no poor, no outcasts, and no one held in bondage to another. We honor labor, oppose exploitation and the destructive concentration of wealth and power, share abundance, care for the Earth, and work so that every person has the necessities and opportunities required for a joyful and dignified life. We reject colonial-settler Zionism and every attempt to build a sacred society through dispossession, displacement, domination, or conquest. We renounce war, proclaim peace, and refuse to make God the sponsor of conquest, persecution, revenge, or violence, and we commit ourselves to solidarity with those who are oppressed.

15. A Non-Coercive Public Faith

We believe in the separation of church and state and in equal civil rights for people of every faith and no faith. We share Reform Mormonism freely with those who inquire, but reject proselytizing that relies on manipulation, fear, or vulnerability. We require no tithing and oppose the commodification of Divinity, and instead, we encourage people to give their time, labor, knowledge, and resources freely wherever they believe these gifts will relieve suffering and do the most good.

16. Honest Heritage and Continuing Reform

We claim the Mormon tradition as a living inheritance without allowing it to bind us. We honor the light carried by prophets, artists, scholars, mystics, and others while following none of them without question. We tell our history honestly and accept responsibility for the racism, sexism, queerphobia, coercive polygamy, authoritarianism, abuse, and suppression of knowledge committed in Mormonism’s name. Where our inheritance has caused harm, we commit ourselves to truth-telling, apology, repair, and prevention. As further light is received and a better understanding is gained, we will continue to revise our teachings, practices, and this platform itself.

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Frequently Asked Questions

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