Why This Exists

The Third Enlightenment Church began as a search for moral clarity that would not resolve.

For much of my life, I had written off Christianity. The God portrayed through much of institutional religion did not align with my understanding of justice, conscience, or moral responsibility. What I encountered as faith often felt less like a pursuit of truth and more like obedience to inherited authority.

In recent years, close friends began returning to Christianity through Orthodox and other traditional denominations. I wanted to walk alongside them, not out of pressure, but because I wanted my daughter to grow up shaped by the ethical teachings of Jesus. I wanted her to learn compassion, humility, integrity, forgiveness, and responsibility toward others.

That desire forced a question I could no longer avoid.

If the ethical teachings of Jesus are as profound as they claim to be, why do they so often feel buried beneath fear, dogma, and institutional control?

I began studying Christianity slowly and seriously. I read early texts, church history, Enlightenment thinkers, and modern scholarship. I did not rush to conclusions.

What I discovered changed everything.

Christianity was never meant to be a system of inherited authority enforced by fear.
It was meant to be a moral teaching aimed at the conscience.

When I encountered Thomas Jefferson’s work, especially his effort to preserve the ethical teachings of Jesus apart from superstition and coercion, it confirmed that this tension was not new. It had simply been left unresolved.

We looked for a church that held reason, conscience, and the moral teachings of Jesus together.

We could not find it.

So we created one.

Who We Are

The Third Enlightenment Church is a modern, Enlightenment inspired Christian fellowship centered on the ethical teachings of Jesus.

We focus on humility, compassion, integrity, forgiveness, and love of neighbor.

We approach faith through reason rather than superstition and through conscience rather than coercion.

We stand in the tradition of thinkers who believed faith should strengthen moral responsibility rather than replace it, and that authority should persuade rather than command. This includes Enlightenment Christians and reformers who took Jesus seriously while rejecting fear based theology and institutional domination.

We are not trying to recreate a perfect past.
We are trying to recover what proved durable, humane, and morally serious, and to carry it forward honestly.

Our Core Convictions

We believe questioning authority using reason is not a threat to faith, but one of its safeguards.

We believe the human conscience, when nurtured by reason, humility, and compassion, is the highest moral authority within each person.

We believe faith that cannot be examined cannot be trusted.

We believe Jesus consistently appealed to conscience rather than power, understanding rather than fear, and moral responsibility rather than blind obedience.

These convictions are not original to us. They echo through early Christian teaching, Enlightenment Christianity, and Jesus’s own method of moral instruction.

Our Approach

The Church exists for personal and spiritual exploration.

We believe faith should strengthen the mind, not silence it.
We believe moral responsibility cannot be outsourced to institutions.
We believe truth is best pursued through inquiry, not enforced agreement.

We do not claim certainty or final answers.
We expect disagreement, revision, and growth.

What matters to us is not unanimity, but honesty.

What We’re Not

We are not a political organization.
We are not enforcing doctrine.
We are not rejecting Christianity, tradition, or community.

We are rejecting fear as a moral tool and authority as a substitute for conscience.

A Church for Wherever You Are

The Third Enlightenment Church is an online fellowship for people who want to think carefully, speak openly, and take moral responsibility seriously.

We gather digitally for reflection, discussion, learning, and shared practice. We are building a space where people from different backgrounds can explore difficult questions without fear of exclusion or ridicule.

If you have felt caught between belief without reason and reason without conscience, you are not alone.

This church exists because that tension deserves a home.