(Statement Approved at Meeting for Business October 16, 2016)

Camas Friends Church seeks to be a welcoming and inclusive community that encourages people to better love God, love others, and love ourselves. To love ourselves is to embrace our unique, God-given identity and gifts, given to us for our own sake and as a potential blessing to others. We strive to be a safe space where people of diverse perspectives and values can worship and minister together in unity and in the Quaker tradition.

We honor the diverse spiritual journeys people are on, including their own deeply personal understandings of sexuality and gender. We advocate for healthy relationships and will support them, whether between people of the same or opposite genders. Membership in our meeting is open to all people who want to join us in our Christ-centered Quaker journey and practice of group discernment.

While human sexuality is a particularly weighty topic of conversation in our religious context, we do not see our desire to equally value straight and LGBTQ identity as something that should define our meeting. It is simply one expression of what is most important to us and the culmination of our worshipful discernment process. While we are Christ-centered and Quaker and recognize the prominence of certain theologies, skin colors, and sexual orientations in our meeting, we hope that all who would participate in the life of our Quaker community would feel at home.

We believe that diversity enriches our community. We encourage our members to speak their voice with confidence but listen to others with humility. We support each person’s faith journey and walk together as we seek the Light of Christ in our lives.