Old Gods

In the Gospel accounts, Jesus makes care, generosity, and service central to how people should live. Several teachings closely match our spiritual imperatives:

• Feed, welcome, clothe, and care. Matthew 25:35–40 treats feeding hungry people, welcoming strangers, clothing people, and caring for the sick as service to Jesus. These acts closely parallel our response to Hunger, Sickness, and Exposure.
• Become a neighbor through action. In Luke 10:25–37, the Good Samaritan treats an injured man, finds him shelter, and pays for continuing care. Compassion takes practical responsibility across community boundaries.
• Resist greed. Luke 12:13–21 warns against making accumulated possessions the measure of a life. We recognize a parallel with the Horde: selfishness and greed that weaken shared responsibility.
• Let practices serve people. Mark 2:23–28 places the Sabbath in relation to human benefit. Our creed extends this concern to institutions and economic arrangements, judging them by their effects on life.
• Use power to serve. Mark 10:42–45 makes service the measure of greatness among Jesus’s followers. We ask that power remain answerable to the lives it affects.
• Extend care beyond your own circle. Matthew 5:43–48 calls for love even toward enemies. We recognize the responsibility to uphold human dignity while opposing harm.

These passages also invoke God, divine authority, and eternal life or judgment. Our agreement concerns the duties described; our creed grounds those duties in shared, mortal life within nature.

Read the sources: Matthew 25:31–46 · Luke 10:25–37 · Luke 12:13–21 · Mark 2:23–28 · Mark 10:42–45 · Matthew 5:43–48.

Jewish scripture and rabbinic teaching connect moral responsibility with the ordinary arrangements of community life: who eats, who receives fair treatment, how strangers are welcomed, and whether people continue the work entrusted to them.

• Make care part of religious practice. Isaiah 58:6–12 joins freeing oppressed people with feeding hungry people, housing those without shelter, and providing clothing. We recognize our duties against Hunger and Exposure in these concrete acts, and in the passage’s concern with repairing community life. (Isaiah 58:6–12)
• Build provision into the way resources are used. Leviticus 19:9–10 requires leaving part of the harvest for poor people and resident strangers. Deuteronomy 15:7–11 requires an open hand toward needy members of the community. We draw a connection to arranging reliable access to necessities, alongside answering individual requests for help. (Leviticus 19:9–18 · Deuteronomy 15:7–11)
• Extend care to the stranger. Leviticus 19:33–34 forbids mistreating resident strangers and commands love for them, recalling the Israelites’ own experience as strangers. This resonates with our insistence that belonging to a different people or faith does not remove someone from our responsibility to care. (Leviticus 19:33–34)
• Use fair dealings and fair judgment. Leviticus 19:11–15 rejects deceit, withholding a worker’s pay, and biased judgments favoring either wealth or poverty. We recognize the importance of trustworthy institutions and rules that resist the Horde’s pull toward advantage at another person’s expense. (Leviticus 19:11–15)
• Do not exploit vulnerability. Leviticus 19:14 prohibits insulting a deaf person or putting an obstacle before a blind person. We carry the ethical concern into accessibility and protection from exploitation: a person’s disability or dependence increases our responsibility to make participation possible. (Leviticus 19:14)
• Protect what sustains life. Deuteronomy 20:19–20 limits the destruction of food-bearing trees even during a siege. Its immediate setting is warfare. We see a narrower historical example of a duty we apply more broadly today: protect the living resources on which present and future communities depend. (Deuteronomy 20:19–20)
• Continue work whose completion exceeds one lifetime. Pirkei Avot 2:16 teaches that a person need not complete the whole task to remain responsible for taking part in it; its surrounding language concerns Torah and divine reward. We recognize the discipline of contributing to a future whose full results we may never see. (Pirkei Avot 2:16)

Where our understandings differ. These teachings belong to Jewish covenantal, legal, and interpretive traditions. Their original boundaries and religious grounds should be read in context. Our creed makes care universal through shared mortal life and does not depend on divine command or an expected reward after death.

How we carry this forward. We apply these duties to accessible communities, dependable provision, fair institutions, and the protection of ecosystems. Work for future generations begins by protecting people alive now. The duty continues even when the complete repair of the world exceeds our own lifetimes.

Sikh teachings give spiritual life a practical expression in service, shared food, honest work, and equal human dignity. These are close connections to our understanding of useful work and mutual care as spiritual practice.

• Serve without making reward the purpose. Seva is service shaped by love and devotion. Guru Granth Sahib, Ang 286, commends service performed without self-interested expectation. We recognize care as a responsibility in itself. Preparing food, cleaning, tending someone, and repairing what a community needs can all express faith through action. (Sikh Coalition: seva · Ang 286 and related passages)
• Make a shared table an institution. Langar provides a community meal for visitors, including people who are not Sikh. Preparing and serving it are themselves forms of service. This gives a concrete parallel to answering the Gnawer together: shared provision can be a regular communal practice with people contributing in different ways. (Sikh Missionary Society: langar)
• Join honest work with sharing. Kirat karna concerns an honest livelihood, while vand chhakna concerns sharing. Ang 1245 joins earning through work with giving some of what one has. We recognize the dignity of useful contribution and the duty to share its benefits. Our creed also protects those unable to work. (Honest labor and sharing; Ang 1245)
• Reject inherited claims of human inferiority. The Sikh Coalition describes equality across gender, caste, and ethnicity as a consequence of divine presence in everyone. Ang 473 challenges the denigration of women. We share the ethical demand that social status and identity must not determine someone’s dignity or access to care. (Sikh Coalition: equality · Guru Granth Sahib, Ang 473)
• Let truth show in conduct. Ang 62 gives special importance to truthful living, beyond merely speaking about truth. This connects with our requirement that intellectual honesty become a practice: acknowledging uncertainty, correcting errors, honoring commitments, and making our actions consistent with what we say we value. (Truthful living; Ang 62)
• Widen the circle of concern. Ang 1299 describes a spiritual outlook in which no person is regarded as an enemy or a stranger. We recognize an aspiration to care across divisions. In our creed, the Horde names destructive impulses within us; it never becomes a label for an outside people. (Guru Granth Sahib, Ang 1299)

Where our understandings differ. Sikh service and equality are rooted in devotion to the Divine and the authority of the Guru. Our church shares these practical responsibilities while understanding life through nature and evidence. Our guarantee of necessities also extends beyond any person’s employment, productivity, or religious participation.

How we carry this forward. We carry service into community kitchens, care networks, repair, education, and institutions that distribute the benefits of new technology. As automation changes work, contribution can take many forms; the right to food, shelter, and care remains.

The Qur’an repeatedly links faith with duties toward other people: giving, keeping commitments, fair judgment, responsible speech, and restraint. These passages offer specific ethical connections to our creed, within Islam’s own theological setting.

• Answer need with resources and action. Qur’an 2:177 includes giving valued wealth to relatives, orphans, people in poverty, travelers, and those seeking help or release from bondage, alongside keeping promises. We recognize the demand to put resources to work for vulnerable lives and to treat care as part of one’s commitments. (Qur’an 2:177)
• Give without humiliating the recipient. Qur’an 2:262–264 warns against following charity with reminders of one’s generosity or injury to the recipient. This closely matches care that preserves dignity. Meeting someone’s needs should not become a means of buying obedience, displaying superiority, or making that person feel indebted to us. (Qur’an 2:262–264)
• Keep justice independent of loyalty and hatred. Qur’an 4:135 calls for truthful witness even against oneself or one’s relatives. Qur’an 5:8 forbids allowing hostility toward a people to produce injustice. We recognize the responsibility to hold ourselves accountable and protect others’ rights even during disagreement. (Qur’an 4:135 · Qur’an 5:8)
• Check claims before causing harm. Qur’an 49:6 requires checking news brought by an unreliable wrongdoer before harming people through ignorance. Qur’an 17:36 warns against pursuing what one does not know. We apply a related duty to all consequential claims, including news, accusations, and AI-generated information. (Qur’an 49:6 · Qur’an 17:36)
• Treat human difference as an invitation to know one another. Qur’an 49:13 describes peoples and tribes as an opportunity for mutual knowledge, locating honor before God in righteousness. We recognize the rejection of ancestry as a sufficient claim to superiority and the importance of cooperation across communities. (Qur’an 49:13)
• Practice restraint in consumption. Qur’an 7:31 permits eating and drinking while warning against excess or waste. We connect this to using resources with care. Enjoying life and meeting real needs can coexist with resisting wastefulness and the accumulation that leaves others without enough. (Qur’an 7:31)
• Keep religious commitment free from coercion. Qur’an 2:256 rejects compulsion in religion while affirming the truth of faith in God. We recognize an ethical connection to voluntary participation. This is a comparison with that passage, rather than a claim that every historical interpretation or legal practice adopted our church’s understanding of freedom. (Qur’an 2:256)

Where our understandings differ. These duties are grounded in God, revelation, and accountability in the Qur’an. Our creed grounds them in shared life and the consequences of our actions. The passages provide points of contact; they do not make Islamic theology and our non-theistic account of reality equivalent.

How we carry this forward. We extend these responsibilities into dignified access to necessities, fair institutions, careful public communication, and accountable technology. Our use of AI must preserve the duty to check claims and the human responsibility for any harm caused by acting on them.

These examples draw mainly from early Buddhist texts preserved in the Pali tradition. They connect the investigation of suffering with conduct, care, and mental discipline; they do not represent every Buddhist school or practice.

• Understand suffering and respond to its causes. The teaching of the Four Noble Truths in SN 56.11 asks practitioners to understand suffering, abandon its origin, realize its cessation, and develop a path of practice. We share the practical concern with causes and remedies, while also addressing illness, deprivation, and harmful social conditions through evidence. (SN 56.11)
• Care for people who cannot repay the community. In Mahavagga VIII.26, the Buddha and Ananda wash and tend a sick monk whom others have neglected because he contributes no work. The community is instructed to care for its sick. This is a particularly close parallel to care that does not depend on usefulness, wages, or a person’s ability to reciprocate. (Mahavagga VIII.26)
• Extend goodwill to all living beings. The Karaniya Metta Sutta cultivates goodwill toward beings without distinctions of size, strength, distance, or visibility. We recognize a widening circle of care that reaches beyond our immediate group and species. Our ecological responsibilities give that concern a practical form in protecting habitats and living systems. (Karaniya Metta Sutta, Sn 1.8)
• Do not feed cycles of hatred. Dhammapada 5 teaches that hatred is not ended by further hatred. We see a connection to resisting the Horde within ourselves: protecting people and opposing harmful conduct should not require cultivating cruelty or treating whole groups as enemies. (Dhammapada 5)
• Examine how a livelihood affects life. AN 5.177 rejects five trades for lay followers: weapons, human beings, meat, intoxicants, and poison. Our church does not adopt this entire list as a rule, but shares the underlying question of whether work sustains life or profits through harm. An income alone does not make an activity spiritually worthwhile. (AN 5.177)
• Recognize change and dependence. Dhammapada 277–279 addresses impermanence and not-self; SN 12.2 describes dependent arising. We recognize a philosophical resemblance to lives sustained through changing conditions and relationships. These are Buddhist teachings about experience and liberation, and do not establish a scientific theory of biological life or consciousness. (Dhammapada 277–279 · SN 12.2)
• Test teachings by their effects and informed judgment. The Kalama Sutta, AN 3.65, questions reliance on tradition, authority, and reasoning alone; it also asks whether qualities produce harm and whether the wise criticize them. We recognize disciplined examination and correction. This passage is more demanding than accepting whatever feels right, and is not a statement of modern scientific method. (AN 3.65 and translator’s note)

Where our understandings differ. The texts place these practices within a path toward liberation, and include rebirth and other commitments beyond our creed. Our church’s account of a person as an emergent, mortal pattern is its own position. Similar ethical concerns do not settle the philosophical differences.

How we carry this forward. We carry care and disciplined attention into medicine, mental well-being, humane institutions, and the design of technology. Reducing suffering requires attention to both personal habits and the systems that shape people’s opportunities. Useful tools must be judged by their effects on living beings.

Hindu traditions are diverse. The examples here come specifically from the Bhagavad Gita, read with attention to its religious setting. Its treatment of action, compassion, learning, and concern for others offers several points of contact with our creed.

• Take another being’s experience seriously. Bhagavad Gita 6:32 commends regarding the happiness and suffering of others in relation to one’s own. We recognize a basis for empathy: another life’s pain and possibilities matter even when we do not experience them directly. Care requires considering the effects of our choices from more than our own position. (Bhagavad Gita 6:32)
• Look beyond rank when recognizing value. Bhagavad Gita 5:18 describes equal vision toward a learned Brahmin, several animals, and a person stigmatized by social status. We recognize a challenge to narrow circles of concern. Our own commitment is to equal human dignity and care for other life, rather than a claim about every historical social arrangement. (Bhagavad Gita 5:18)
• Act for the welfare of a larger world. Bhagavad Gita 3:20–21 connects responsible action with the good of the world and the example set by influential people. This resonates with our conviction that understanding brings responsibility: those with knowledge, power, or resources should help make life more secure and capable. (Bhagavad Gita 3:20–21)
• Do necessary work without making personal reward its measure. Bhagavad Gita 3:19 calls for performing duty without attachment to its fruits. We recognize the value of contribution beyond applause, status, or personal gain. In our practice, this does not remove accountability for results: a well-meant action still needs examination when it causes harm. (Bhagavad Gita 3:19)
• Give because giving is right. Bhagavad Gita 17:20 commends giving at an appropriate time and place to a worthy recipient without expecting a return. We share the ethical concern with generosity free of bargaining. Our creed applies provision according to need and dignity, without requiring repayment or religious agreement. (Bhagavad Gita 17:20)
• Cultivate compassion and loosen possessiveness. Bhagavad Gita 12:13–14 describes a devotee who is friendly and compassionate, free from malice, possessiveness, and egoism, and able to forgive. We recognize a close ethical connection to confronting the Horde: care grows when the self stops treating its own advantage as the only thing that matters. (Bhagavad Gita 12:13–14)
• Learn through sincere questions. Bhagavad Gita 4:34 tells the learner to approach an enlightened teacher with inquiry, reverence, and service. We recognize humility and active participation in learning. Our church applies a different standard of authority: any teacher’s factual claims remain open to evidence, questioning, and correction. (Bhagavad Gita 4:34)

Where our understandings differ. The Gita situates these teachings within accounts of the Self, divine reality, liberation, and prescribed duties. Hindu schools interpret these differently. Our creed’s natural account of life and consciousness is distinct, and we do not inherit social hierarchies merely because a valued teaching appears within a historical tradition.

How we carry this forward. We carry empathy and service into the effects of institutions and technologies on others. As our actions reach more people, ecosystems, and future generations, responsible action must consider that wider reach. The work remains practical: help life flourish and stay accountable for the consequences.

Jain ethics offer especially close connections to the church’s care for life. Ahimsa, or nonviolence, reaches beyond humanity, while restraint, truthfulness, and giving turn concern into daily practice. Lay and monastic obligations differ in degree.

• Minimize harm to living beings. Ahimsa makes avoiding injury to living beings a central duty, including attention to intentional and unintentional harm. We recognize the responsibility to examine the consequences of food, materials, transport, and technology. Our approach seeks evidence about effects and workable ways to reduce harm. (JAINA: practices · JAINA: great vows)
• Give food, medicine, protection, and knowledge. The four forms of giving described in Jain teaching include nourishment, medical help, protection from danger, and education. Compassionate giving can extend to people outside the faith and to animals. These closely parallel our duties against Hunger, Sickness, and Exposure, together with sharing knowledge. (JAINA, Jain Philosophy and Practice II, “Support to Welfare Activities” · Jain community practice: four forms of giving)
• Set limits on possessiveness. Aparigraha concerns reducing attachment to possessions. JAINA’s explanation of householders’ vows includes limiting acquisitions and directing surplus toward the common good. We recognize an ethical response to the Horde: resources can support a flourishing life without making endless accumulation the purpose of that life. (JAINA: householders’ vows)
• Do not take through deception or exploitation. Asteya, or non-stealing, reaches beyond direct theft to dishonest or unjust acquisition and approval of such conduct. We connect this with fair dealing and consent. The fact that someone can obtain an advantage does not establish that taking it serves life or respects the people affected. (JAINA: non-stealing)
• Make truthfulness a responsibility toward others. Satya concerns truth in speech, thought, and action, with care about harm caused through speech. Jain explanations warn against enabling others’ falsehoods as well as telling one’s own. We recognize the duty to avoid deception and communicate responsibly; honesty should not become a pretext for cruelty. (JAINA: truthfulness)
• Recognize the limits of a single perspective. Anekantavada emphasizes the many-sided character of reality and the limitations of one-sided judgments. We see a connection to intellectual humility, listening, and revising our understanding. For our church, acknowledging partial perspectives still requires checking factual claims; it does not make every competing claim equally well supported. (JAINA: compassionate and ethical living, section 1.0)
• Understand life through mutual support. JAINA’s discussion of the Tattvartha Sutra invokes the mutual support and interdependence of living beings. We recognize a connection to Team Earth: individual lives depend on relationships with other lives. This similarity in ethical outlook does not make Jain ideas about living souls identical to our biological account. (JAINA: mutual support and interdependence)

Where our understandings differ. Jain teachings place these practices within an account of souls, karma, and liberation. The church does not adopt that metaphysics or the full discipline of Jain ascetic life. We draw on the shared concern for reducing harm, giving practical help, and restraining possessiveness.

How we carry this forward. We apply these responsibilities to accessible care, food security, education, animal welfare, and the environmental effects of production. Greater technical power gives us more capacity to help and more capacity to injure; it therefore increases the responsibility to examine both.

These connections come from the Daodejing, one influential Daoist text. Its images of humility, nourishment, and restraint invite us to examine how ambition and force can undermine the lives we intend to help.

• Keep compassion at the center. Chapter 67 names compassion, frugality, and reluctance to put oneself first as three treasures. We recognize care that resists turning courage or achievement into domination. (Daodejing 67, Robert Eno translation)
• Admit the limits of knowledge. Chapter 71 values recognizing what one does not know. We share the discipline of stating uncertainty and remaining open to correction. (Daodejing 71, Robert Eno translation)
• Know when there is enough. Chapter 46 warns against insatiable acquisition. We connect this to resisting the Horde’s appetite and making room for life, learning, and care. (Daodejing 46, Robert Eno translation)
• Regard violence as a grave cost. Chapter 31 treats weapons as dangerous instruments and calls for mourning rather than delight after killing in war. We share the duty to protect life and pursue peace. (Daodejing 31, Robert Eno translation)
• Benefit others without demanding prominence. Chapter 8 compares the highest goodness to water, which benefits living things while occupying low places. We see an image for essential work that rarely attracts status: maintaining homes, preparing food, cleaning, tending, and quietly making life possible for others. (Daodejing 8: original text and historical translations)
• Nourish without treating life as a possession. Chapter 34 describes the Dao sustaining things without claiming ownership or mastery over them. We recognize a model for stewardship: support people’s capacity to live and grow without making care a claim to control them. (Daodejing 34, Chinese Text Project)
• Use power with humility. Chapter 66 portrays good leadership through taking a lower position and avoiding becoming a burden to people. We connect this with accountable stewardship and our concern that institutions serve the lives depending on them. (Daodejing 66, Robert Eno translation)

Where our understandings differ. These selected passages do not represent all Daoist traditions. Our active program of scientific learning and technological development is our own commitment. The comparisons here concern ethical restraint and care, rather than treating the Dao as another name for a scientific theory.

How we carry this forward. For the church, greater power must come with restraint: intervene carefully, preserve people’s agency, and study unintended consequences. Progress should improve the conditions of life. Its scale alone is not evidence that it is good, and the people doing quiet sustaining work must remain valued.

The Analects approaches moral life through relationships, learning, self-correction, and public responsibility. These passages offer connections to our work of learning how to human: becoming capable of living well with others.

• Use reciprocity as a daily discipline. Analects 15.24 advises against imposing on others what one would not want imposed on oneself. We recognize the need to consider another person’s position before acting. In our practice, that includes listening to their actual needs and boundaries, rather than assuming they share our preferences. (Analects 15.24)
• Help others gain the opportunities you seek. Analects 6.30 connects seeking one’s own standing and achievement with helping other people attain theirs. We recognize mutual flourishing: caring for ourselves and helping others need not be competing purposes. Knowledge, opportunity, and security become more valuable when they can be shared. (Analects 6.30: translated passages)
• Distinguish knowledge from ignorance. Analects 2.17 treats recognizing what one knows and does not know as part of knowing. This closely matches intellectual honesty in our creed. Uncertainty should be stated where it affects a decision; authority, confidence, or fluent language cannot substitute for evidence. (Analects 2.17)
• Combine learning with reflection. Analects 2.15 warns against both learning without thought and thinking without learning. We recognize the need to bring information and judgment together. Our church’s educational work should teach people how to investigate, evaluate, and apply knowledge, alongside making information available. (Analects 2.15)
• Correct an error through changed conduct. Analects 15.30 identifies the failure to correct a mistake as a further mistake. We share the demand that correction become action. A person or institution demonstrates accountability by changing what produced harm, checking the result, and making its remaining limitations clear. (Analects 15.30)
• Treat public well-being as the basis of prosperity. In Analects 12.9, You Ruo challenges a ruler facing a poor harvest to reduce the burden on the people, linking the ruler’s sufficiency to theirs. We recognize the principle that institutions cannot be judged prosperous while the lives supporting them lack what they need. (Analects 12.9)
• Cooperate without requiring sameness. Analects 13.23 distinguishes harmony with others from merely agreeing or conforming. We recognize a basis for communities that can work together while retaining different experiences, skills, and viewpoints. Shared responsibility does not require everyone to use the same symbols or suppress a well-founded disagreement. (Analects 13.23)

Where our understandings differ. These texts developed within social settings that included hereditary rank and hierarchical roles. We do not assume their historical arrangements meet our commitment to equal rights. The selected overlaps concern reciprocity, humane responsibility, and learning; our creed determines how we apply those duties today.

How we carry this forward. We apply these disciplines to education, community governance, and human oversight of AI. People must remain able to question decisions, recognize uncertainty, correct failures, and contribute different kinds of knowledge. Cooperation becomes stronger when it includes those affected by the outcome.

Zoroastrian teachings place ethical choice and participation in the world’s improvement at the center of religious life. The examples below use translated texts and identified community interpretations, since translations and theological readings differ.

• Bring thought, speech, and action into agreement. The ethic commonly rendered as good thoughts, good words, and good deeds links inner intention to what a person says and does. We recognize a demand for integrity: a generous belief becomes meaningful through truthful communication and useful action, including care that can be observed in practice. (Yasna 35.2–3 and the threefold ethic, Encyclopaedia Iranica)
• Make an informed moral choice. In the Zarathushtrian Assembly’s translation, Yasna 30.2 asks listeners to hear, consider with a clear mind, and choose for themselves. We recognize the importance of considered participation and personal responsibility. Our church adds that factual claims must remain open to evidence rather than resting on the standing of a teacher. (Yasna 30.2, translation and commentary)
• Take part in making the world better. Yasna 30.9 expresses the wish to join those who renew existence; the Assembly interprets this as active participation in improving life. We recognize an unusually direct parallel to the church’s future orientation: the world we hope for requires work by the people living in it. (Yasna 30.9, translation and commentary)
• Connect one’s happiness with the happiness of others. FEZANA publishes D. J. Irani’s translation of Yasna 43.1 as an aspiration for the happiness of those who work for others’ happiness. We recognize mutual flourishing. Personal well-being and care for other lives can reinforce one another through cooperation and shared security. (Yasna 43.1, D. J. Irani translation)
• Include the least advantaged in a good social order. The Zarathushtrian Assembly interprets the Yatha Ahu prayer as describing an order that cares for the least advantaged. Its precise wording is debated by scholars. We recognize the ethical connection to protection for vulnerable people, while keeping the translation and interpretation visible rather than treating a modern policy as an uncontested ancient command. (Assembly: the Yatha Ahu · Encyclopaedia Iranica: translation questions)
• Treat care for the natural world as a duty. The Zarathushtrian Assembly describes environmental stewardship, including reverence for water and other elements, as an expression of responsibility for creation. We recognize the obligation to preserve the conditions supporting life. Our practice grounds environmental decisions in ecology and the evidence about human effects. (Assembly: environmental responsibility)

Where our understandings differ. These commitments belong to a religious account of divine wisdom, moral order, and the renewal of creation. Our church understands improvement as work within nature, undertaken by mortal beings. Our Horde also names selfish impulses, and is not a claim about a supernatural power or an evil people.

How we carry this forward. We carry the responsibility for renewal into healthier communities, restoration of damaged ecosystems, and a peaceful future for life. Caring for Earth and preparing to carry life responsibly beyond it are parts of that commitment. Renewal must be demonstrated in the conditions life actually experiences.

Bahá’í teachings connect spiritual development with the advancement of a united human civilization. Their treatment of education, useful work, inquiry, and social responsibility provides several close points of contact with our church’s mission.

• Understand humanity as one community. Bahá’í teaching makes the oneness of humanity a central principle and calls for freedom from prejudice. We recognize the ethical purpose of Team Earth: people’s different nations, backgrounds, and identities exist within a shared responsibility for one another and the world that sustains them. (Bahá’í teachings: one human family · Basic teachings)
• Keep inquiry open to reason and science. In Paris Talks, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá urges seekers to examine inherited assumptions and weigh religious claims through reason and science. We recognize an important overlap in honest inquiry. Our church’s standard for factual claims is evidence and correction; it does not assume that a religious conclusion must be true in advance. (Paris Talks, principles 1 and 4)
• Make education available to everyone. Bahá’í writings call for universal education and describe public responsibility when a family cannot provide it. We recognize learning as a shared resource. People need access to knowledge and opportunities to develop their abilities throughout life, rather than having that opportunity depend entirely on household wealth. (Bahá’í Reference Library: education)
• Expand opportunity for women and men. Equality of women and men is an explicit Bahá’í principle; the writings link women’s advancement with access to education and opportunity. We recognize the duty to remove barriers that waste human capabilities. Our own commitment to equal rights governs participation and responsibility within the church. (Basic teachings · Education and opportunity)
• Recognize useful work as spiritual practice. Bahá’í teaching treats work performed in a spirit of service as worship, including arts, sciences, crafts, and caring for the sick. This closely parallels our view of creative and sustaining work. What makes the work spiritually meaningful is its contribution to life, rather than whether it happens inside a religious building. (Work as worship)
• Address severe deprivation through social arrangements. Bahá’í writings on social action discuss economic arrangements that reconcile capacity and need, and challenge extreme wealth alongside abject poverty. We recognize the responsibility to organize provision beyond isolated acts of charity. Our creed makes food, shelter, healthcare, and basic security matters of shared responsibility. (Social Action: economic development)
• Use consultation to seek understanding together. Bahá’í consultation calls for frank, courteous contributions, freedom from personal ownership of ideas, and a shared search for truth. We recognize a way to resist ego in group decisions. Our application also requires evidence, accountability, and meaningful participation by the people affected. (Consultation: principles and practice)
• Build peace across national boundaries. Bahá’í teachings join justice and equity with the possibility of world peace and the advancement of civilization. We recognize the need for planetary cooperation as problems and capabilities cross borders. Our church’s future commitments extend that responsibility to the wider living world and future generations. (Bahá’í basic teachings · Humanity, communities, and institutions)

Where our understandings differ. Bahá’í belief includes God, divine revelation, and an enduring soul, with its own religious institutions. Our creed is non-theistic and understands individual consciousness as mortal. We share several social and ethical commitments while retaining different accounts of spiritual authority and reality.

How we carry this forward. We apply unity, education, service, and consultation to a diverse planetary civilization. AI and other powerful tools should expand people’s ability to learn, care, create, and participate. Their development must remain under accountable human stewardship, directed toward access to what life needs to flourish.