About Faulkner

Faulkner’s Statement of Christian Principles and Core Values

No one has to be told that the world is changing rapidly. Institutions all over the world, medical, legal, and religious, are changing. Colleges and universities are changing. Local churches are changing, too.

Many changes are beneficial. Advances in medicine and health care, progress in communication technology, erection of useful new facilities are changes to be appreciated. As Christ’s church evangelizes the world, grows in grace and knowledge of the Lord, loves its neighbors and bears its cross daily, methods, programs and some of the needs of those to be served may change.

Faulkner University is a Christian University. Being Christian, it is connected to things that cannot change. With the help of God and by the determination of its administration and faculty, the university will not change in its relation to these things.

God is the beginning and the end of all things. He is creator and sustainer of the universe. All that is was brought into being by the power of His word. He said, “Let there be,” and there was. He changes not.

Faulkner University is committed to the centrality of Jesus and His cross. All of us have sinned. We are, therefore, powerless to save ourselves. God sent His Son Jesus into the world to taste of death for us all. Every sermon in Acts has Jesus Christ as its theme. Paul the apostle determined to know nothing but Jesus Christ and Him crucified. God forbid that Faulkner University should glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.

We unabashedly affirm, as the Bible does, that no sinner can be saved except by the grace of God. God’s grace is appropriated by faith in the atoning death of Christ. Those who believe the gospel and desire to be saved are baptized into the death of Christ and raised by the power of God to walk in newness of life. Jesus promised salvation to those who believe and are baptized, and Faulkner University is committed to the necessity of baptism for the washing away of sins. Scripture affirms it clearly and consistently, and so therefore do we.

Christ promised to build His church and did as He promised. The church cannot save; only Christ can save, but Christ saves the church. One who is redeemed by the blood of Jesus is added by the Lord to the church, is translated by God into the kingdom of Christ. This church, by definition, includes all the redeemed. Faulkner University is unwaveringly committed to the uniqueness and non-denominational nature of the Lord’s church.

God has chosen to reveal Himself in Christ, His incarnate Word. Christ sent God’s Holy Spirit to guide His apostles and others into all truth, and they in turn committed that revelation to writing in God-breathed Scripture.

All we can know of what Jesus taught and did, as well as what His disciples taught and wrote in His name, is found in Scripture. Jesus quoted Scripture, citing what Scripture says as what God said. On His authority, the faculty and administration of Faulkner University, a Christian University, accept the Bible as the word of God. We hold it to be completely true as the word of One who cannot lie, and completely authoritative as the word of the One who made us, loves us and will one day judge us by that very word.

There are principles and imperatives that God has revealed through Scripture to direct the work and worship of the Church. These include:

Each congregation is autonomous, with no human governance outside itself. Leadership in each local church is by spiritually qualified men chosen by the congregation in accordance with biblical qualifications.

In corporate worship the church is to follow the instructions of the apostles. It must seek to please God and not itself. It should, therefore, be governed by what God has indicated he wants to receive from us rather than merely by what we might want to offer. In practice that means the congregation offers “the fruit of our lips,” or a cappella singing, not instrumental music. It also means participation in the Supper of the Lord each Lord’s day.

God has ordained male spiritual leadership for the church, including placing leadership roles in corporate worship in the hands of men. This does not imply that women are inferior to men. They are not. It does, however, accurately reflect the respective roles God has assigned to men and women.

The moral climate in the world today demands a firm commitment to biblical morality. Dishonesty, sexual intercourse outside of marriage whether heterosexual or homosexual, disregard for the value of human life whether in the womb or without, drunkenness “and such like” are declared by Scripture to be sin. We have neither the desire nor the right to say sin is not sin.

In addition, we also stand against unrighteous anger, racist attitudes and actions, an unforgiving bitter spirit, “and such like.” A divisive spirit, so eager to carry tales against brothers that it will not check out what has been heard before rushing to repeat it, and those who are so insistent on their own way that they cause havoc and heartbreak in the church rather than yield in their will or opinion must also be opposed.

To summarize, God is God, Jesus Christ is Savior and Lord, the Bible is God’s inerrant and authoritative revelation of Himself and His will, the church is God’s redeemed people seeking in all things to please Him. To this Faulkner University is wholeheartedly committed.

Here we stand.

PDF of Here We Stand