All Are Welcome: Baptismal Covenant and Church Safety

“All are welcome” appears on church signs, websites, and Sunday bulletins. It expresses one of the Church’s most important convictions: every human being bears the image of God, and no one is beyond the reach of grace. The words make a promise to people who have often been told that church is not for them.

A promise that large requires more than an open door. It requires a community willing to protect the dignity of the people who walk through it.

Political writer Adam Bates recently returned to an argument he had made about the Libertarian Party. His subject was political organizing, yet his warning applies to churches as well: “You can say ‘all are welcome,’ but if wolves and sheep are both welcome then you’re only going to get wolves. The smart sheep will go somewhere else and the naive sheep will be eaten and processed. If you welcome Islamophobes and Muslims then you’ll get Islamophobes. If you welcome Klan members and people of color then you’ll get Klan members. If you welcome nativists and immigrants you’ll get nativists. Refusing to choose is a choice. It’s a choice in favor of the people who prey on others and who refuse to acknowledge the humanity of those they hate.”¹ People who expect to be humiliated, harassed, or forced to defend their humanity will eventually leave. Those who enjoy humiliating and harassing them will have more room to act.

Christian faith insists that repentance and transformation remain possible. Still, predatory behavior is real. When leaders ignore it in the name of welcome, they offer the vulnerable as the price of maintaining a pleasant appearance.

Every person may enter. Every person must respect the dignity and safety of others. The Episcopal Church’s Baptismal Covenant gives us a standard for holding those truths together.

Welcome Is a Promise

Hospitality is part of the Episcopal Church’s public identity. “The Episcopal Church Welcomes You” signs have stood along roads and outside parishes since the 1950s, expressing a commitment to make room for every person. Many congregations express the same hope more simply: “All are welcome.”

The message is especially important for LGBTQ people, people of color, immigrants, disabled people, and others who have learned to approach churches cautiously. They have heard welcoming language before. Some have entered only to discover that the welcome came with an expiration date. They were welcome until they named injustice, asked for access, brought a same-gender spouse, shared their pronouns, or sought a place in leadership.

A church cannot measure its welcome by the friendliness of its greeters. The better measure is whether people can participate without surrendering their dignity. The Church’s own racial justice audit captured this distinction when an Episcopal leader described belonging as something deeper than welcome: if a person is missing from the table and the common life, the community itself is incomplete.²

Belonging cannot flourish where cruelty faces no consequence. A welcome offered equally to the person seeking community and the person determined to degrade them will protect the person with greater social power. Refusing to act is still a decision, and the effects of that decision fall unevenly.

Philosopher Karl Popper called attention to the paradox of tolerance. Unlimited tolerance can allow intolerant movements to destroy the conditions that make a tolerant society possible. Popper also warned against using this idea as an excuse to suppress every offensive opinion. He argued that rational argument and public judgment should remain the first response while they remain possible.³

Yonatan Zunger offers a useful way to understand the apparent paradox: “Tolerance is not a moral absolute; it is a peace treaty.”⁴ Tolerance allows people with different customs, beliefs, identities, and ways of life to live beside one another. It depends on a mutual commitment to let others live with the same freedom and safety we claim for ourselves.

This distinction keeps us from confusing difference with harm. A person’s race, sexual orientation, gender identity, nationality, disability, or religion does not violate the social contract. An unpopular opinion does not automatically violate it either. A community committed to dignity should be able to hold theological disagreement, political disagreement, honest questions, and criticism.

The breach comes when someone uses their presence or power to deny those same freedoms to others. Racial slurs, sexual harassment, threats, stalking, bullying, repeated and deliberate misgendering, anti-LGBTQ intimidation, or humiliating a disabled person are not contributions to a vigorous debate. They damage another person’s ability to participate safely in the community.

The Church is more than a voluntary social club, and the Gospel calls us beyond mere tolerance toward love. Even so, the social-contract model helps us see that love does not require passive acceptance of harm. Love seeks the good of the person being harmed, the health of the community, and the repentance of the person causing harm. Those responsibilities belong together.

Our Covenant Sets the Standard

Episcopalians already have language for our common life. In Holy Baptism, we promise to continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, resist evil, proclaim the Good News by word and example, seek and serve Christ in all persons, love our neighbors, strive for justice and peace, and respect the dignity of every human being.⁵

The Baptismal Covenant is our Christian social contract. It names how baptized people intend to live with God and one another. It recognizes that we will fail. The question says “whenever you fall into sin,” and the promised response is repentance and return. Grace is built into the covenant. Accountability is built into it too.

Respecting human dignity cannot mean giving harmful conduct unlimited room. If a church lets one person use racist language without correction, it has failed to respect the dignity of those targeted. If leaders excuse anti-trans harassment as a difference of opinion, they make the harasser’s comfort more important than a transgender person’s safety. If a powerful member bullies volunteers and everyone stays silent because the member gives generously, the church has allowed money to overrule its baptismal promises.

The Covenant binds the baptized because we have made these promises. Guests may know nothing about the prayer book, and they may not share Christian belief. They deserve patience and a clear explanation of the community’s expectations. They are still accountable for behavior that threatens, degrades, or harms others. Unfamiliarity calls for added grace. It cannot become a free pass.

Churches should make those expectations visible. A short community covenant or code of conduct can translate baptismal language into practical terms: speak without degrading others, respect names and boundaries, refrain from harassment and threats, listen when harm is named, and follow the directions of those responsible for safety. Such guidance helps guests, members, staff, and leaders understand that the same standard applies to everyone.

Accountability in Matthew 18

Jesus gives the Church a model for addressing sin within the community in Matthew 18:15–17. The process begins with direct conversation. If the person listens, the relationship has been regained. If the person refuses to listen, one or two others become involved. Continued refusal brings the matter before the church. At the final stage, the relationship to the community changes.

The surrounding chapter helps us understand the purpose. Jesus speaks about seeking a lost sheep before giving these instructions, then teaches about forgiveness immediately afterward. The process aims at restoration and protects the community along the way. It takes wrongdoing seriously because people and relationships matter.

Several principles follow from Jesus’ teaching:

Begin with loving, direct correction when it is safe and appropriate.
Use witnesses and broader accountability when private correction fails.
State the harmful conduct clearly rather than attacking someone’s character or speculating about motives.
Use consequences proportionate to the conduct and the risk.
Keep restoration open when repentance, repair, and changed behavior make restoration possible.

Matthew 18 must never be weaponized against someone reporting abuse. A person facing violence, sexual misconduct, stalking, credible threats, or a serious abuse of power should not be required to confront the person privately. Church safeguarding policies, diocesan procedures, mandated-reporting laws, and law enforcement may need to take priority. The Episcopal Church’s Safe Church resources specifically include training in abuse, bullying, harassment, healthy boundaries, and reporting.⁶

Grace Does Not Remove Consequences

Restoration is the goal of Christian discipline. Restoration requires truth. A vague apology offered to avoid consequences does not repair harm. Repentance involves recognizing what happened, stopping the conduct, making amends where possible, accepting appropriate boundaries, and demonstrating change over time.

Depending on the situation, accountability may include a private correction, a mediated conversation, removal from a leadership role, limits on participation, a requirement to complete training, or being asked to leave an event or the property. Serious cases may require a report to civil or ecclesiastical authorities. Forgiveness does not automatically restore access, authority, or trust. Trust is rebuilt through sustained faithfulness.

These boundaries can also serve the person who has caused harm. A community that excuses destructive conduct leaves that person trapped in it. Honest correction creates the possibility of repentance. Consequences tell the truth about the seriousness of the conduct and the value of the people affected.

Even when someone must be separated from a congregation for safety, the Church must refuse cruelty, vengeance, and dehumanization. Jesus tells his followers to love enemies and pray for those who persecute them. Christian accountability protects the community while continuing to desire repentance and healing. Love sometimes requires distance and firm limits.

A Welcome Worth Trusting

“All are welcome” should remain one of the Church’s clearest messages. Every person should be able to enter a church and encounter prayer, Scripture, beauty, community, and the grace of Jesus. No one should be excluded because of race, class, disability, nationality, sexual orientation, gender identity, family structure, past wounds, doubt, or unfamiliarity with church.

That welcome becomes trustworthy when the community refuses to sacrifice vulnerable people to preserve someone else’s comfort. A church shaped by the Baptismal Covenant makes room for difference, questions, disagreement, confession, forgiveness, and growth. It also confronts conduct that denies dignity or makes participation unsafe.

Congregations can begin with practical questions. Are our expectations for conduct clear? Do people know how to report harm? Will leaders act when the person causing harm is influential, generous, or popular? Do our responses protect those with less power? Do we provide a path toward repentance without demanding that harmed people surrender their safety?

Welcome is active Christian work. It requires open doors, courageous leadership, fair processes, and boundaries rooted in love. The Baptismal Covenant gives us the terms of our common life: resist evil, repent when we fail, seek Christ in every person, strive for justice and peace, and respect every person’s dignity.

Let our churches say “all are welcome” with confidence. Then let our common life make those words true.

References

1
Bates, A. (n.d.). [Facebook post about “all are welcome” and the Libertarian Party]. Facebook. Retrieved July 19, 2026, from https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1HB5pJmUo8/
2
The Episcopal Church. (2021). Racial justice audit of Episcopal leadership. https://www.episcopalchurch.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/RR-Racial-Justice-Audit-Report_ENG.pdf
3
Popper, K. R. (2013). The open society and its enemies (New one-volume ed.). Princeton University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400846672 (Original work published 1945)
4
Zunger, Y. (2017, January 2). Tolerance is not a moral precept. Extra Newsfeed. https://medium.com/extra-extra/tolerance-is-not-a-moral-precept-1af7007d6376
5
The Episcopal Church. (1979). The Book of Common Prayer (pp. 304–305). Church Publishing. https://www.episcopalchurch.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/book_of_common_prayer.pdf
6
The Episcopal Church. (2024). Safe Church, Safe Communities: Course selection. https://www.episcopalchurch.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Safe-Church-Safe-Communities-Full-File-Recommendations.pdf