VALUES & TEACHINGS
Our Vision
United in Spirit, we are a loving community, co-creating a world of peace, abundance, and joy for all.
Our Mission
With God as our Source, Unity of Columbus inspires people to realize and express their Divine nature in an awakening world.
Our Core Values
At Unity of Columbus, we answer the “CALL” of Spirit!
We are:
Creative
We use our imagination and search for fresh ideas.
We are genuine and reliable, and we demonstrate that in our words and deeds.
We enjoy acquiring knowledge through experience and study.
We welcome all people with open hearts, kindness, curiosity, compassion, and respect.
We use our imagination and search for fresh ideas.
Authentic
We are genuine and reliable, and we demonstrate that in our words and deeds.
Learning
We enjoy acquiring knowledge through experience and study.
Loving
We welcome all people with open hearts, kindness, curiosity, compassion, and respect.
Unity's Five Principles
God Is
God is Absolute Good, everywhere Presence. God is not an entity that is present; God is the very Presence of all Life. We can count on (and therefore trust) God as Principle of Good: eternal, infinite, and unchanging.
I AM
Human beings have a spark of Divinity within them, the Christ Spirit within. Their very essence is of God and therefore they are also inherently good. This is our experience of God as personal. Jesus’s one commandment was to love. Therefore, we embrace God as Divine Love within each of us. We are the Light and Life of God in expression.
Law of Mind Action (LMA): I Think
Human beings create their experiences by the activity of their thinking. Everything in the manifest realm has its beginnings in thought. Thoughts held in mind produce after their kind. We do not manifest every thought we have, only those thoughts that we hold in thought and infuse with our powers of faith and imagination.
Affirmative Prayer: I Pray
Prayer is the most creative form of thought; prayer heightens the conscious connection with God-Mind and therefore brings forth wisdom, Wholeness, prosperity and everything good. Prayer does not change God! Prayer changes us by expanding our consciousness towards the Christ consciousness. Therefore, when we pray, we affirm that which is Truth so that we move closer to accepting that Truth.
Living the Truth: I LIVE
Knowing and understanding the laws of life, also called Truth, are not enough. A person also must live the Truth that she or he knows. This is basis of practical Christianity: the ability to live the Truth.
Unity and You
Unity teaches that God’s Love and Power are present everywhere, dwelling within us and all around us. We live, move and have our being within God, which means that Divine Love, wisdom, and guidance are available to all people to sustain us in any situation. We believe that humans co-create with God through the power of their thoughts and words.
Unity is a positive approach to Life, seeing the good in all – for all is God. Unity emphasizes that God is not a physical being in the sky; rather, God is Spirit, everywhere present, the one and only Spirit behind, in, and through all things, visible and invisible.
We are all spiritual beings in a shared adventure of human experience. Through ignorance of our spiritual essence, we may create a sense of lack, limitation and separation from each other, and from God. In Truth, however, we are one – one with each other and with all Life, because all Life is an integral part of the energy that is God.
Unity denies the existence of any power or presence opposed to God. That which we call “evil” is not a separate power; it arises from a consciousness that we could ever be separate from our Source, God. Sin is what results when and if we act from that “error thought” of separation.
We acknowledge that there are evil appearances and suffering in the world, but ascribe these to the erroneous use of God’s laws of Life.
Unity and Jesus
Unity affirms the Divinity of Jesus, but goes further and assures that you, too, are a child of God and are, therefore, Divine in nature. We see Jesus as a Master Teacher of Universal Truths and our Way Shower. Jesus was not the exception, He was the example.
We believe that Jesus expressed His Divine potential and sought to show humankind how to express ours as well. He called us to follow His example, to recognize the same spiritual power within ourselves that He was able to express in His life. He tells His followers in the Gospel of John that they who have faith have the power to “…do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these…”
We recognize Jesus as a perfect demonstration of our own potential. Jesus used His life to show what we can achieve in terms of healing, abundance, love, and peace. Achieving our full spiritual expression, the state of being that Jesus called “the Kingdom of Heaven,” is the primary purpose of Life.
Unity and the Bible
Unity co-founder Charles Fillmore was widely known for his Bible scholarship, and the Bible continues to serve as Unity’s core textbook, even as we appreciate and draw strength from other scriptures and all of the world’s religions. We honor the Bible, in part, as a history of the Hebrew people, including the stories, myths, songs, and sayings that defined their culture and beliefs. We recognize it on a second level as a great textbook, offering practical life lessons that help people to survive and grow in their human experience.
Primarily, however, Unity interprets the Bible metaphysically. We understand it to be a map of our spiritual journey, and each of the figures, objects, plants, animals, cultures, and geographic locations mentioned throughout the 66 Books of the Bible represents an aspect of our consciousness. For example, the Apostle Simon Peter represents man’s Faith faculty: the Power we express anytime we believe in something with conviction. “Now Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1) It is upon this “Rock” that Jesus builds His church.
The word “metaphysical” dates to Aristotle in about 500 BC, as he described a power that operated beyond the physical senses. It literally means “above the physical.”
The Bible is a tool for teaching, a gift that we can use to more fully understand and learn about our own journey by studying the written journeys of those who have come before.
Honoring Diversity Within the Unity Movement
We believe that all people are created with sacred worth. Therefore, we recognize the importance of serving all people within the Unity family in spiritually and emotionally caring ways. We strive for our ministries, publications, and programs to reach out to all who seek Unity support and spiritual growth.
It is imperative that our ministries and outreach be free of discrimination on the basis of race, color, gender, age, creed, religion, national origin, ethnicity, physical disability, gender identity, gender expression, or sexual orientation. Our sincere desire is to ensure that all Unity organizations are nondiscriminatory and support diversity.
In our effort to reach out to all people as did our Way Shower, Jesus Christ, we support the modification of our facilities to make them accessible to all people, regardless of physical challenges; the translation of our materials into braille and other languages; and respect for the wonderful variety of human commitments and relationships.
We encourage ministers, teachers, and others within Unity to honor the strength of diversity within their spiritual communities. It is with love and in celebration of our unity, in the midst of our wondrous diversity, that we affirm this position.
(Adopted by Unity World Headquarters at Unity Village and Unity Worldwide Ministries, January 23, 1995; revised November 5, 2014)
Unity Statement of Peace
Unity stands for peace in the presence of conflict; for love in the presence of hatred; for forgiveness in the presence of injury. Unity honors the many names for God, the many paths to God, the many ways to worship God; for there is only One Power and Presence of God and that God loves each one of us equally. It is therefore the position of Unity Worldwide Ministries and Unity World Headquarters at Unity Village to urge all nations, their leaders, and their people to turn to God by whatever the name for guidance during these challenging times and pursue peace, not war, for this is what honors the God of all our faith traditions. Unity stands for peace in our lifetime.