What We Believe

Commitment to Faith, Life, and Learning

Los Angeles Pacific University teaches and serves from a Christian worldview through a holistic understanding and practice of promoting faith, life, and learning. We believe the entire LAPU community is called to contribute to cultivating hope through learning and we accomplish this through our core values of being Exemplary, Caring, and focused on Learning. We are committed to preparing individuals not only with the skills and attitudes to thrive in their community and workplace, but also to point the way to something bigger — to the ultimate hope that is in Jesus Christ.

As it relates to students, LAPU conceives the promotion of faith, life, and learning as engaging students in learning (through curriculum design, instruction, and student support) that reflects the Christian worldview of LAPU and culminates in the realization of hope in our students. As a result of this process (through their interactions and study at LAPU) our students will be able to:

• apply a Christian worldview to their life and work in the world;
• articulate how and in what ways their life journeys connect to God’s story;
• engage with diverse faith perspectives within the learning community at LAPU; and,
• recognize God’s work in the world through all academic disciplines.

Learn more about Faith, Life, and Learning at LAPU.

Commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Los Angeles Pacific University’s philosophy regarding diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) is to address inequities related to race, gender, ethnicity, and age, by identifying and articulating a preferred future of caring (a university core value), mutual respect, inclusion and belonging, that is the role and responsibility of all. This philosophy evolves from the university’s vision and purpose statements, identifying Los Angeles Pacific University (LAPU) as an accessible institution that is intentional in caring, a core value, for every person in both attitude and behavior. Believing that God created each person uniquely and in His image (Genesis 1:26-28), each individual is valued as worthy of dignity and respect.

Individuals have different physical features, speak different languages, are different biologically, and enjoy different cultures, and yet the Bible states that all human beings are created in the image of God. For this reason, LAPU refers to the inclusion and belonging of all people by using the Latin term for “image of God,” imago dei. The expected behavior and norms (culture) are that each person in and associated with the university is treated as a creation of God and with godly love and respect (Matt 22:37-39).

However, knowing that we as humans are fallible and unconsciously biased through our history, experiences, and context, LAPU leadership promotes and institutionalizes this philosophy through integrated, consistent, and intentional awareness, education, and growth interventions. Ongoing interventions, with acceptable progress, are essential in growing and maintaining a community that strives for a desired culture of caring, respect, belonging, and inclusion. Awareness, intention, and growth are not the responsibility of one executive or a single department, but are the responsibility of the entire community – reflecting a shared responsibility or shared equity leadership model. The goal of the university is to promote and demonstrate at all levels, with all constituents, a culture of inclusion. Leaders at all levels are responsible for assessing the level of achievement, overcoming challenges, and measuring progress toward becoming a community reflective of our vision and purpose of access for all people and the core value of caring.

Religious Expression

The precious freedom to express our religious tenets is recognized by the United States and California Constitutions. Other federal and state laws likewise support the opportunity for Los Angeles Pacific University and other religious higher education institutions to weave religious beliefs into all aspects of university life. For example, exemptions in Title IX (20 U.S.C. section 1681(a)(3)) and the California Equity in Higher Education Act (Cal. Ed. Code section 66271) support Los Angeles Pacific’s efforts to operate consistently with its religious tenets by maintaining faith-based standards of behaviors that all community members voluntarily agree to follow as a condition of living and learning in our community. These laws provide Los Angeles Pacific and other religious institutions with the discretion to thoughtfully make policies and build community expectations around our mission to advance the work of God in the world through academic excellence and to help students develop a Christian perspective on truth and life.

Statement of Faith

As an educational institution with a Wesleyan tradition at its core, it seems natural to us to embrace a statement of faith that is common among many Christian traditions.

• We believe the Bible to be the inspired, the only infallible, authoritative word of God.
• We believe that there is one God, creator of heaven and earth, eternally existent in three persons—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
• We believe in the deity of our Lord Jesus Christ, in His virgin birth, in His sinless life, in His miracles, in His vicarious and atoning death through His shed blood, in His bodily resurrection, and in His ascension to the right hand of the Father, and in His personal return to power and glory.
• We believe in the fall and consequent total moral depravity of humanity, resulting in our exceeding sinfulness and lost estate, and necessitating our regeneration by the Holy Spirit.
• We believe in the present and continuing ministry of sanctification by the Holy Spirit by whose infilling the believing Christian is cleansed and empowered for a life of holiness and service.
• We believe in the resurrection of both the saved and the lost; those who are saved to the resurrection of life and those who are lost to the resurrection of damnation.
• We believe in the spiritual unity of believers in our Lord Jesus Christ.

Statement of Academic Freedom

At Los Angeles Pacific University, we believe that all truth is God’s truth and that God has made it possible for humankind to access, discover, and understand truth. We also affirm that the knowledge of truth will always be incomplete and that people, including those with educational credentials, are fallible and may interpret data and ideas imperfectly.

Therefore, academic freedom from a Christ-centered perspective must be carried out with civility, mature judgment, and the awareness of the broad representation of Christian faith that exists within this institution. Accordingly, LAPU affirms its commitment to freedom of inquiry and expression in academic endeavors.

The university recognizes that academic freedom has historically been defined both by broadly accepted academic standards and by the mission and character of the institution in which it is practiced. LAPU seeks to maintain an academic community in which lecturers are free to engage in rigorous scholarly inquiry and expression within an intellectual context shaped by the evangelical Christian tradition. In addition to this freedom, LAPU seeks to pursue scholarly inquiry and expression in a way that extends and enriches the academic disciplines from the unique resources provided by the institution’s identity.

Thus, at LAPU, academic freedom is defined both by the commonly accepted standards of the academy and by those commitments articulated in the documents that are central to the university’s identity as a Christian university. These documents articulate the central commitments which shape the academic community, and thus the practice of academic freedom, at LAPU: a belief in God as the Creator of all things, in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, in the Holy Spirit as teacher and guide, in Scripture as God’s authoritative and infallible revelation, and in the Christian community as an expression and vehicle of God’s redemptive work in this world. The university follows these principles in its practice of academic freedom:

• Lecturers are entitled to the rights and privileges and bear the obligations, of academic freedom in the performance of their duties. Specifically, lecturers are free to pursue truth and knowledge within their disciplines in the classroom, in their research and writings, and in other public statements in their field of professional competence. At all times lecturers should strive for accuracy, exercise appropriate restraint, and show respect for the opinions of others.
• Lecturers are entitled to freedom in the classroom in discussing their subject. Lecturers should be careful not to introduce into their teaching controversial matter which has no relation to the subject.
• While lecturers are members of the global community, as scholars and members of the LAPU community, lecturers should remain cognizant that the public will form perceptions of their profession and their institution by their utterances.
• In the practice of the academic vocation, complaints against lecturers may be generated. Lecturers shall be protected from any request to retract or modify their research, publication, or teaching merely because a complaint has been received. Only complaints alleging lecturers’ violations of professional standards of the discipline or of advocating positions incompatible with the central commitments of LAPU as a Christian university shall be considered, and then only when the evidence supporting the allegation is more substantial than a rumor, inference, or hearsay.
• In the event that a lecturer believes his or her academic freedom has been unduly restricted, he or she may pursue resolution of this issue through the existing lecturer grievance procedure as articulated in the Academic Handbook.