This Declaration of Intent comes to the Uniting Church in Australia from the Second National Evangelical Summit, held at Mount Waverley, Victoria, from 20th to 21st February 1998.

We believe God is calling us to confess the faith of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church stated in the Basis of Union of The Uniting Church in Australia.

Such was the declaration of intent of the second evangelical summit held at Mount Waverley Victoria on February 20-21 1998. Present were members of the Uniting Church in Australia who belong to E.M.U., F.F.R., Charismatic Renewal, the Ethnic Churches, The Forum on Faith and Society, and those not aligned with any of these groups.

At the advent of a new millennium we recognise that our culture and church are in crisis. We believe God is calling us to confess anew the Apostolic faith for the sake of church and nation in the face of forces destructive of the Uniting Church in Australia and the fabric of society. We believe God is calling us to prepare a Confessing statement and to establish a Confessing movement within The Uniting Church in Australia.

With the Basis of Union we acknowledge "that the faith and unity of the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church are built upon the one Lord Jesus Christ".

No force, philosophy or ideology can reduce, add to or replace this one foundation. The foundation is none other than the gospel of Jesus Christ as he is revealed in Holy Scripture. We affirm the Basis of Union in its statement that the preaching of Christ is controlled by the biblical witnesses and that the prophetic and apostolic testimony to Christ is the unique authority for the knowledge of the Christian faith.

We confess that the Prophetic and Apostolic witness to Christ makes the Bible the unique book of the Church because of its original and intrinsic connection with the history of the promises of God and its astonishing climax in the career of Jesus Christ. It is for the sake of Christ alone that the Church continues to submit to the Bible as a book without equal in the life of the Church.

Because Christ is the authority of Scripture we hear the Word of God in the prophetic and apostolic witness to Christ. There is no other fixed canon than the prophetic and apostolic witness to Christ. There is no knowledge of Christ apart from the Apostles’ testimony.

We gathered at Mount Waverley out of a common concern for the unity of The Uniting Church in Australia which is severely threatened.

The unity of the Uniting Church is threatened by a practice of church life which is at odds with the saving and final revelation which we have in Christ. We repudiate the false teaching that the Church can turn over her message and teaching to other lords than Christ, such as past or present ideology, behaviourism, or the government of the day. We repudiate the placing of the authority of the Church in the place of the authority of Christ. Because the authority of Scripture is Christ, we repudiate the importation of an alien authority for the interpretation of Scripture other than the Christ of Scripture. We believe that if this practice continues to be authorised by the councils of The Uniting Church in Australia then it may cease to be truly part of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.

We have no intention to found a new Church nor to supplant the Basis of Union of The Uniting Church in Australia. Rather we call the members of The Uniting Church in Australia to join us in withstanding in faith and unanimity the subversion and therefore the destruction of the unity of The Uniting Church in Australia.

This threat consists in the councils of the church proclaiming the unity of the Spirit while ceasing to order the affairs of the church in sole faithfulness to Christ. We repudiate pronouncements made in the name of the Spirit which are divorced from the incarnate Word of God who entered history and became our flesh and blood to die for our sins and rise from the dead. We repudiate a phantom Christ.

We believe the Holy Spirit, as the Father’s witness to Christ, has been faithfully speaking through the centuries-long tradition of the post-apostolic Church. His speaking in the historic and contemporary Church and world does not supersede, supplant, nor add to the final revelation of God in Christ Jesus as testified in Holy Scripture.

Should the foundation of The Uniting Church continue to be basically contradicted and rendered invalid by alien positions espoused by the government of the church then the unity of The Uniting Church in Australia will prove impossible to maintain.

We confess that through God’s holy unconditional love, revealed in Christ, our human brokenness, alienation, relational perversions and revolt against God were judged in the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ. We declare that there is no circle of human wickedness which may not receive the inclusive redemption of God in Christ nor his transforming power.

The centre of this inclusiveness is the sanctifying love of the Triune God. We repudiate any form of inclusivism based upon an ideology alien to the Scriptures as being offensive to God whose name is Holy. Therefore we repudiate the sanctioning of relationships which destroy or violate human beings made in God’s image. In Holy Scripture we find Christ teaching that the only "one flesh" union which God intends is that of a man and a woman as husband and wife where each recognises the other as bone of their bone and flesh of their flesh. That the church should wish to normalise illicit sexual relationships, including homosexual, is an attempt to replace the foundational Gospel of God’s grace with another "gospel" which is no gospel.

The errors we repudiate centre upon the displacement of the authority of Christ for another authority. We call upon all who recognise the truth of the declarations we have made to participate in a confessing movement.

Our consciences are to be subject to the Word of God. It is not our feelings or reason which is final, but Christ. God is the world’s future. What we and the creation shall be has already happened in Christ in whom is the consummation of all things. We will only be the people of the future as we are the people of Christ infecting all people with this hope. Then shall no corner of the world be unaware of God’s promise of new creation through the power of the resurrection.