Read Them Yourself

This site argues with other traditions constantly, and an argument is only as honest as the reader's ability to check it. So here is every confession we quote or contend with, linked to the version the body itself publishes rather than to a critic's excerpt. None of these links is an endorsement, and several of them state things we reject. That is the point. A position is worth answering only in the form its own adherents would recognise, and the fastest way to guarantee that is to hand you the original and get out of the way.

Two things worth noticing as you read. First, how much of the substance is shared: the creed, the canon, the Trinity, the incarnation, the resurrection. Second, where the divisions actually fall, which is almost never on those and almost always on the mechanisms built to explain them.

Catholic

The Roman Catholic Church teaches from one universal catechism, with the councils behind it.

• Catechism of the Catholic Church — Promulgated 1992, revised 1997. The full official text at the Vatican site.
• Second Vatican Council, documents — 1962 to 1965. Lumen Gentium and Dei Verbum are the two that most change how the earlier centuries are read.
• Council of Trent — 1545 to 1563, the Counter-Reformation response. Text in Schaff's Creeds of Christendom, volume 2.

Orthodox

The Eastern churches have no single confession equivalent to a Western one, and say so deliberately: the creed and the councils are the standard.

• Orthodox Church in America, The Orthodox Faith — A four-volume catechetical series, the closest thing to a systematic statement in English.
• Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese — Doctrine, liturgical texts and the Fathers, from one of the ancient patriarchates.

Anglican

One formulary, and provinces that relate to it differently.

• The Thirty-nine Articles of Religion — 1571, the Church of England's own text, printed with the Book of Common Prayer.
• Church of England — The mother province.
• Anglican Church in North America — Formed 2009, holds the Articles and its own catechism, To Be a Christian. The Knoxville congregation is in this body.

Lutheran

Everything Lutheran is measured against one collection.

• The Book of Concord — 1580. (The Augsburg Confession itself is also on this site, in full.) The Augsburg Confession, its Apology, the Small and Large Catechisms, the Formula of Concord. Full text, free.
• Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod — Subscribes to the Book of Concord without reservation.
• Evangelical Lutheran Church in America — The larger and more latitudinarian body.

Presbyterian and Reformed

One confession, several denominations, real differences in how strictly it is held.

• Westminster Confession of Faith — 1646. Published here by the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, with the proof texts.
• Westminster Larger and Shorter Catechisms — The teaching companions to the Confession.
• Presbyterian Church in America — Confessional, subscribes to Westminster as its doctrinal standard.
• Evangelical Presbyterian Church — Holds Westminster with liberty on non-essentials, and states which are which.
• Presbyterian Church (USA) — Uses a Book of Confessions rather than one confession, twelve documents from Nicaea to the Belhar Confession, added in 2016.
• Belgic Confession — 1561, continental Reformed.
• Heidelberg Catechism — 1563, and the warmest of all the Reformation catechisms.
• Canons of Dort — 1619. The five points, in their original form and order, answering the Arminian articles.

Baptist

No central authority, so the confessions are many and voluntary, which the tradition regards as a feature.

• Second London Baptist Confession — 1689. Westminster reworked by Baptists, with believer's baptism and congregational government.
• Baptist Faith and Message — 1925, revised 1963 and 2000. The Southern Baptist Convention's statement.
• American Baptist Churches USA — Historically resists binding confessions altogether.
• Baptist World Alliance — The global fellowship, 240-odd bodies, no common confession by design.
• Founders Ministries library — Reformed Baptist primary texts, including the 1644 and 1689 confessions.

Methodist and Wesleyan

Wesley's own abridgement of the Articles, plus his sermons and notes.

• Articles of Religion of the Methodist Church — 1784. Wesley's revision of the Thirty-nine Articles, cut to twenty-four; the American conference added a twenty-fifth. Text in Schaff, volume 3.
• The United Methodist Church — The doctrinal standards sit in the Book of Discipline.

The sources behind all of them

Where to read any of these side by side.

• Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, volume 1 — The history and analysis. Public domain.
• Volume 2, the Greek and Latin creeds — Nicaea through Trent.
• Volume 3, the Protestant confessions — Augsburg through the nineteenth century, in one place.

Related: Who Believes What (the same bodies compared on ten questions, with size estimates), Even From Their Own Confessions, What the Early Church Confessed, What the Word Says, and What We Believe It Means, Terms Used on This Site, Every Line Drawn Is Another Division, and The Church, One Story. External links go to each body's own publication of its text, or to Schaff's public-domain Creeds of Christendom where a body does not publish one. Every link was checked when this page was written; if one has moved, the document itself is easily found by name.