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Principles
This website is primarily concerned with analysis and actions that try to discern the best path to support the flourishing of life for all. These pages contain some of the basic principles that help inform such insight. As a human endeavour it is always prone to distortion. Yet as humans we must continually refresh that best sense of life for all and how to achieve it.
As a religious community, we use all sources of insight available to us, when properly applied - scripture, reason/knowledge/science, intuition, tradition, and experience. There is an axiom that undergirds this process: the clearer our perception of reality – via the above processes – the better our chances of bringing about life’s fulfillment. The process does not imply a simple linear connection between knowledge and goodness (“to know the good is to do the good”), but rather an ongoing, very human, iterative cycle of awareness, facts, action and reflection.
Ends: Grappling with ethical issues requires first of all a vision of what is intended. Religiously in our Christian tradition this is called the Kingdom of God on Earth, or Shalom or Zion. Philosophically, it is called the well-being of all, or more poetically the flourishing of life for all.
Means: Once the above anchoring is established, ethical analysis involves searching for the best Means to achieve the above Ends. For instance, because our view of Shalom involves peaceful relations, we firstly and exhaustively search for Means that might line up with that attribute of non-violence.
You can also check out the list of the International Church’s Enduring Principles.
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