Mission

We believe that true freedom of religion includes the following elements:

• Every person has the right to determine his or her own faith or creed according to conscience.
• Every person has the right to the privacy of his or her belief, to express it in worship, teaching, practice, and to proclaim its implications in a social or political community.
• Every person has the right to associate with others and to organize with them for religious purposes.

Religious organizations should have the right to:

• Assemble for unhindered private or public worship
• Formulate its own creed
• Determine its conditions of membership
• Give religious instruction to its youth, including preparation for ministry
• Preach its message publicly
• Receive into its membership those who desire to join it
• Conduct social services and to engage in missionary activity both at home and abroad
• Organize local congregations
• Publish and circulate religious literature
• Control the means necessary to its mission and to secure support for its work at home and abroad
• Cooperate and to unite with other believers at home and abroad
• Use the language of the people in worship and in religious instruction
• Determine freely the qualifications for professional leadership of religious communities, freely naming their religious leaders at all levels and designating their work assignments