Background

The Little Blue House (formerly United Campus Ministry) at The University of Tulsa (TU) involves a diverse group of people on the TU campus and the greater Tulsa Community. The LBH represents a stream of the Christian and Unitarian Universalist faith traditions that try to be intellectually honest, liberating, and sensitive to the needs of people wherever they are on life’s journey. The LBH is part of an international network of faith communities and campus ministries that affirm the following:

• Recognize the faithfulness of other people who have other names for the way to God’s realm, and acknowledge that their ways are true for them, as our ways are true for us;
• Invite all people to participate in our community and worship life without insisting that they become like us in order to be acceptable (including but not limited to): believers and agnostics, conventional Christians and questioning skeptics, women and men, those of all sexual orientations and gender identities, those of all races and cultures, those of all classes and abilities, those who hope for a better world and those who have lost hope;
• Find more grace in the search for understanding than we do in the dogmatic certainty — more value in the questioning than in the absolutes;
• Form ourselves into communities dedicated to equipping one another for the work we feel called to do: striving for peace and justice among all people, protecting and restoring the integrity of all God’s creating, and bringing hope to those Jesus called the least of his sisters and brothers.

Toward a Common Statement on Faith Sharing

• Faith sharing should respect the right of all people to religious freedom.
• Faith sharing recognizes the appropriate role and responsibility of parents for their children’s religious nurture and should seek the knowledge and consent of the parents.
• Faith sharing is a mutual process and does not press beyond the bounds of courtesy.
• Faith sharing requires an openness to dialogue and a willingness to listen as well as to speak.
• Faith sharing should never use physical coercion, moral constraint or psychological pressure that might deprive a person of his or her freedom of choice.
• Faith sharing should never imply or offer temporal or material benefit or appeal to political or economic motives in order to encourage a change in religious affiliation or alignment.
• Faith sharing should never exploit vulnerabilities, such as lack of education, physical infirmity, mental incapacity or emotional distress.
• Faith sharing should not use inaccurate or disparaging references to the beliefs or faith practices of other religious communities.

From Tulsa Metropolitan Ministry’s “Statements and Resolutions” adopted by United Campus Ministry in Spring 2004