Creeds · rules · confessions · covenants
Documents & Confessions
These profiles place influential Christian documents beside their authorship, political setting, textual history, reception, and disagreement. Existing creed pages remain canonical and are joined here by rules, confessions, catechisms, declarations, and covenants.
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The Didache
An early church manual joining moral instruction, baptism, fasting, Eucharistic prayers, hospitality, and community leadership.
The Rule of Saint Benedict
A compact rule for communal monastic life organized around prayer, work, stability, hospitality, and accountable authority.
The Augsburg Confession
The principal Lutheran confession presented to Emperor Charles V during the political and theological crisis of the Reformation.
The Decrees of the Council of Trent
The doctrinal decrees and reform canons through which Catholic leaders answered Protestant challenges and pursued institutional renewal.
The Book of Common Prayer
The liturgical book that placed common English prayer at the center of Anglican worship and carried it around the world.
The Heidelberg Catechism
A Reformed catechism organized around guilt, grace, and gratitude and remembered for its pastoral opening about belonging to Christ.
The Thirty-Nine Articles
A concise doctrinal settlement locating the Church of England within the Reformation while retaining episcopal and liturgical continuity.
The Canons of Dort
A synodical response to the Remonstrants that defined a durable Reformed account of grace, election, atonement, and perseverance.
The Westminster Standards
A confession, catechisms, and church-order texts produced amid civil war that became foundational for Presbyterian and Reformed churches.
The Philokalia
An anthology of Eastern Christian ascetic and contemplative texts centered on watchfulness, prayer, and transformation.
The Barmen Theological Declaration
A six-part declaration rejecting the subordination of the church’s proclamation and order to National Socialist ideology.
Nostra Aetate
The Second Vatican Council declaration that reframed Catholic relations with Judaism and addressed other religious traditions with respect.
The Lausanne Covenant
A global evangelical covenant linking biblical authority, evangelism, social responsibility, cooperation, culture, and mission.
The Belhar Confession
A Reformed confession born under apartheid that centers the church’s unity, reconciliation, and justice.