Generally, yes. A church is a voluntary religious association, and in the United States civil courts are usually reluctant to second-guess who a congregation receives into membership or what it asks members to affirm. The work is not winning permission. The work is writing the statement clearly, putting the membership process in your bylaws, and applying it the same way to everyone.
What is actually happening
Somebody has told you this cannot be done, or that it will bring a lawsuit, or that it will drive people off. Notice that the objection almost never comes with a citation. It comes as a feeling of exposure, and it is fishing for a pause long enough that the membership standard never gets written down. An unwritten standard is not a standard. It is a preference that the loudest voice in the room gets to redefine later.
The Legal Bluff · Rule 9. The threat of litigation, scandal, or mass departure is doing more work than any actual filing would. It is deployed at the moment of decision, before anyone has priced the real risk. Name the worst case out loud, ask what exactly is being alleged, and the fog usually lifts.
What Scripture says
“Can two walk together, except they be agreed?” Amos 3:3
What the book says · Chapter 17, The Mountain of Religion: Defending and Reclaiming Churches and Spiritual Organizations
“The primary defense against the hypocrisy indictment is precise definition, established before the attack arrives. Bylaws and statements of faith have to be explicit. Do not simply say you believe in justice. Define justice as the impartial application of God's moral law and explicitly reject the critical theory definition. Do not simply say you value inclusion. Define it as the welcoming of sinners to repentance rather than the affirmation of sin.”
From Rules for Radical Christians, quoted exactly.
What the law generally says
In the United States, churches are generally treated as voluntary religious associations, and civil courts often decline to review internal decisions about membership, doctrine, and discipline. Public accommodation and anti-discrimination rules that reach businesses generally do not operate to force a congregation to admit members who reject its confession, though the lines are drawn differently when a church runs a school, a daycare, or a rental hall open to the public. Employment is a separate track, where religious employers often have real latitude in hiring for religious roles but not unlimited latitude in every position. Most states also have a nonprofit corporation law that governs how membership classes are created, how members are admitted and removed, and what vote is needed to amend governing documents. Which of those rules applies to your congregation turns on your state and your corporate form, and that is what Ask looks up.
The words to use
"We are asking every member, current and new, to affirm the same written statement of faith, because a church cannot walk together without agreeing on what it believes. If you think our bylaws or the law forbid this, will you show me the specific provision you have in mind?"
Your move
- Get the current bylaws, articles of incorporation, and any existing statement of faith in writing and read them straight through before you draft anything new.
- Write out the contested terms in plain words rather than leaving them to assumption, so that the confession says what you actually mean by marriage, sin, repentance, and the authority of Scripture.
- Put the membership process itself in the bylaws: who reviews the affirmation, what vote receives or removes a member, and what the appeal looks like.
- Apply the same standard to the elders, the staff, and the thirty-year members first, so nobody can say the rule was built to remove one person.
- Use Ask for your state to see how nonprofit corporation law there handles membership classes and amendments to governing documents.
- Document the date the statement was adopted, the vote count, and how every member was notified. A standard nobody was told about is hard to defend.
- Ask your insurance carrier what your policy says about employment and membership disputes, before you need to know.
- Do not adopt a statement in a hurry to remove one particular person. Write it for the next fifty years and let it fall where it falls.
Your situation, your state
This page is the general answer. Describe what is actually happening to you and Ask returns the answer for your situation and your state, with the law looked up and the exact words to use. Your first ask is free.
Ask about your situationNot legal advice. When it stops being a conversation, a lawyer licensed in your state is the next call.