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Constitution
Article V. Understanding the Articles of Faith
Article V.
Understanding the Articles of Faith
A. AMPLIFICATION
Introduction – Historical
The first four paragraphs in our “Articles of Faith” together with
number 6 as it now appears in the present arrangement were
incorporated into our Discipline (Manual) in 1929 under the
above title. The remaining paragraphs of our present Articles
of Faith were then carried under the title “Basis of Union,” and
constituted our statement of faith in 1911, upon the mutual
acceptance of which the Fire-Baptized and Pentecostal
Holiness Churches consolidated in that year.
In the 1941 General Conference, steps were initiated calling
for a vote of the local churches authorizing the grouping of the
Articles of Faith and Basis of Union under one heading as
“Articles of Faith,” with a renumbering of the section
accordingly and the removal from it of any item not specifically
an article of faith. The vote was duly taken as provided in
“Changes in Articles of Faith,” and at the 1945 General
Conference the said changes were incorporated into the
Discipline.
The first four of these Articles are the same in substance as
the first four “Articles of Religion” (of which there are twentyfive)
of the Methodist Church, which are, in turn, substantially
the same as those adopted, with slight variations, by John
Wesley from the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England.
Hence, it will be seen that in the great, basic fundamentals of
our faith, we stand upon common ground with a vast element
of the Christian Church. In fact, our teachings about God;
Christ; the Holy Spirit; about sin and the atonement; the birth,
death and resurrection, ascension and coming again of Christ
are in line with the great stream of doctrine and theology as
stated in the various creeds and articles of faith of the
evangelical Christian Church through the ages, embodying as
they do the great doctrinal statements that issued from the
Protestant Reformation and the Wesleyan revival. In fact,
some of our Articles are similar in thought, and in some
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