ECM recognizes that the university and Lawrence communities need welcoming and neutral spaces to cultivate open hearts, minds, and spirits; to carry out difficult dialogues that can help build bridges between different peoples, experiences, religions, and world views; and to build foundations of love and understanding that welcomes a call to compassion and justice while affirming an interdependenc
e with each other and the earth. Respect: We recognize the faiths of others, and we honor and respect how different groups have their own names for and understandings of God’s realm. We do not insist that others become like us in order for us to accept them. This list includes but is not limited to: believers, agnostics and atheists,conventional Christians and questioning skeptics, those of all sexual orientations and gender identities, those of all races and cultures, those of all classes and abilities, and those who hope for a better world and those who have lost their hope.
3. Exploring Spirit: We strive to remain open to mystery, and we find more grace in the search for understanding than we do in dogmatic certainty, and more value in questioning than in absolutes.
4. Community: We dedicate ourselves to forming ourselves into communities dedicated to equipping one another for work we feel called to do: striving for peace and justice among all people, protecting and restoring the integrity of all God’s creation, and bringing hope to those Jesus called the least of his sisters and brothers.
