American Baptists have affirmed numerous confessions of faith. Our baptismal formula is "upon confession of your faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior." We affirm as central the earliest confession "Jesus Christ is Lord." Throughout our history Baptists have produced and published hundreds of confessions of faith. Such confessions are voluntary and nonbinding. Baptists generally avoid the term creed, which implies an authority and finality that is reserved only for the Bible. One Baptist confession is widely known in England as the London Baptist Confession and in America as the Philadelphia Baptist Confession.

Baptists, in general, and American Baptists in particular, have been careful to avoid coercion of conscience or congregation through creedalism or clericalism. We generally prefer the term confession to creed for this reason. While shunning any movement toward coercion and control, the Southeast Area of the Central Region responds affirmatively to the widespread call among our churches for a clear confession of faith. Accordingly, we affirm the following as our confession of faith: American Baptists are the most ethnically and culturally diverse American Protestant body, but we hold as one the central tenets of the Christian faith.

1. We believe Jesus Christ is Lord- Fully God and fully man, he was born of a virgin, was crucified and raised from the dead on the third day.

2. We believe the Bible, consisting of both Old and New Testaments, is the inspired Word of God, the unfailing, authoritative revelation calling us to submission to the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

3. We believe every human has the responsibility to choose for themselves their own understanding of and relationship to Jesus Christ.

4. We believe the nature of humanity is sinful and it is impossible to please God apart from Jesus Christ. Jesus paid our redemption and it becomes effective upon our faith in Him and our repentance from sin.

5. We believe that baptism by immersion is an expression of obedience to Jesus.

6. We believe the celebration of communion belongs to everyone who has submitted to the Lordship of Jesus, even when that obedience expresses itself differently in other church traditions.

7. We believe in the autonomy of the local church and encourage Christians to live in community with the greater family of God.

In September of 1995 the churches in the Southeast Area responded to the growing pressure from those who want the practice of homosexuality to be welcomed and affirmed with the following resolution:

Since creation, humanity has been faced with a choice of "Alternate Lifestyle". The alternate lifestyles offered for marriage and sexual relations by our permissive societies are wrongly presented as "normal and natural" and acceptable. As American Baptists, and most importantly, as Christians, we are committed to receive our standards of truth and morality from God. Therefore, trusting in God's word, Holy Scripture, we believe and affirm the following statements regarding human sexuality and Christian sexual ethics:

1. God, in creation, gave us our sexuality as both male and female and declared it to be good.

2. God, in creation, established the basis for marriage as being one man and one woman who are joined together and become a new unity.

3. God, in creation, gave us the model of marriage being one man and one woman living in a monogamous relationship for life. Marriage is used as an example by which we are to understand the relationship between God and Isreal, and Christ and the church.

4. Either celibacy or marital faithfulness are required and commended, but heterosexual marriage is the only accepted setting for mutual sharing of the gift of sexuality.

5. Marital infidelity, sexual activity in same sex relationships, and heterosexual sex outside of marriage are opposed to God's intended purposes of creation and therefore are scripturally defined as sinful. When faced with these situations, the church must be willing to offer the grace of forgiveness and reconciliation to responses of repentance.