Many faiths. One Halton.

There is one God, unknowable in essence, who has revealed His will through a succession of Messengers across history.

The great faiths come from the same source and teach the same essential truths, each suited to the age it was revealed in. Bahá’ís call this progressive revelation.

Humanity is a single people. Distinctions of race, nation and class are seen as human inventions to be set aside, not divine orders to be kept.

Each person is responsible for investigating truth for themselves, rather than accepting belief by inheritance or imitation.

Held as a spiritual principle, not only a social one. Bahá’u’lláh likened humanity to a bird whose two wings must be equally strong for it to fly.

Education is a duty owed to every child. Where a family can educate only one child, the daughter is given precedence, since she will be the first educator of the next generation.

Religion without science becomes superstition; science without religion becomes materialism. Both are needed, and true findings of each cannot contradict the other.

Life as ordinarily lived contains dissatisfaction, loss and pain. This is stated as an observation, not a complaint.

Suffering arises from craving and attachment — grasping at what is pleasant, pushing away what is not.

Because suffering has a cause, it can cease. The end of craving is the end of suffering: nirvana.

The Noble Eightfold Path is the way to that cessation — a practical training rather than a belief to accept.

Seeing things as they actually are, including the Four Noble Truths.

Renouncing ill-will and cruelty; the resolve towards goodwill and harmlessness.

Abstaining from lying, divisive talk, harsh words and idle chatter.

Abstaining from killing, taking what is not given, and sexual misconduct.

Earning a living in a way that does not cause harm to others.

Cultivating wholesome states of mind and letting go of unwholesome ones.

Steady, clear awareness of body, feelings, mind and phenomena.

The disciplined stillness of mind developed through meditation.

The teacher who awakened, and the possibility of awakening he demonstrates.

His teaching, and the truth it points to.

The community of practitioners. Taking refuge in these three is what marks a person as Buddhist.

To refrain from taking life — the foundation of non-harming.

To refrain from taking what has not been given.

To refrain from sexual misconduct and from causing harm through desire.

To refrain from lying and deceitful speech.

To refrain from intoxicants that undermine clarity and self-control.

The doctrine of the Trinity: one God, eternally Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Affirmed in the Nicene Creed of 325 AD, shared across Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant churches.

That God became human in Jesus of Nazareth — fully divine and fully human.

Christians hold that Jesus was crucified, died, and rose on the third day; the resurrection is the centre of Christian hope.

The Bible: the Old Testament shared with Judaism, and the New Testament of the Gospels, letters and Revelation.

Two sacraments observed across nearly all churches — baptism marking entry into the faith, communion recalling the last supper.

That God’s love is given freely rather than earned, and that those who receive it are called to forgive others.

The care of the hungry, the sick, the imprisoned and the stranger, which Jesus identified with care for himself (Matthew 25).

The one ultimate reality underlying all things, worshipped through many names and forms. The divine within each person is called atman.

Right conduct: the duty appropriate to a person’s stage of life, role and circumstances. Living in accordance with dharma sustains both the individual and the social order.

Every action carries consequence. Karma is not fate but causation — what is done returns, in this life or another.

The cycle of birth, death and rebirth through which the soul passes.

Liberation from that cycle, and union with the ultimate reality. The final goal of human life.

Non-violence in thought, word and deed — held as the highest duty, and the root of the tradition’s emphasis on compassion towards all living beings.

The Vedas, the oldest layer; the Upanishads, their philosophical culmination; and the Bhagavad Gita, in which Krishna sets out duty, devotion and detachment.

Belief in one God, without partner, equal or offspring — the Creator and Sustainer of all that exists, known through His names and attributes.

Beings created from light who carry out God’s command without disobedience. Among them Jibril, who brought revelation to the prophets.

The scriptures God sent to humanity — including the Tawrat given to Moses, the Zabur to David, the Injil to Jesus, and the Qur’an, the final revelation, preserved unchanged.

The prophets raised up among every people — from Adam through Noah, Abraham, Moses and Jesus, to Muhammad (peace be upon him), the last of them. Muslims are required to honour them all.

The resurrection and the reckoning, when every person will answer for what they did, and nothing done in secret will remain hidden.

That God’s knowledge and will encompass all things — in the words of the hadith, “divine destiny, both its good and its evil” — held together with each person’s responsibility for their own choices.

To bear witness that there is no god but God, and that Muhammad is the messenger of God. Said sincerely, it makes a person Muslim; it is the foundation the other four rest on.

Five prayers at appointed times each day, from before dawn until night, facing the Ka’bah in Mecca. Prayer punctuates the whole day rather than being set aside for one part of it.

An annual obligation on accumulated wealth, ordinarily one-fortieth — 2.5 per cent — given to the poor and the other categories named in the Qur’an. It is understood as the recipient’s right, not the giver’s generosity.

Abstaining from food, drink and intimacy from dawn to sunset through the month of Ramadan. Its stated purpose is taqwa — God-consciousness — and it is widely experienced as an education in what hunger feels like.

The pilgrimage to Mecca, obligatory once in a lifetime on every Muslim with the health and the means to make it. Pilgrims dress alike, so that rank and wealth are indistinguishable.

The uncompromising oneness of God, without form or division — the conviction Judaism carried into the world.

The five books of Moses, and more broadly the whole body of Jewish teaching. Study of Torah is itself an act of worship.

The binding relationship between God and the Jewish people, beginning with Abraham and renewed at Sinai.

“Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one” (Deuteronomy 6:4) — recited morning and evening, and the words a Jew hopes to die with.

The commandments — traditionally counted as 613 — through which faith is expressed in daily conduct rather than belief alone.

The seventh day, kept as rest from creation and work. A weekly refusal to be defined by productivity.

The repair of the world: the obligation to leave the world better ordered and more just than it was found.

“There is one God” — the opening words of the Guru Granth Sahib and the foundation of Sikh belief. One creator, present in all creation.

From Guru Nanak to Guru Gobind Singh, who declared the scripture itself the eternal Guru thereafter.

The Sikh scripture, treated as a living Guru. It includes hymns by Hindu and Muslim saints alongside those of the Sikh Gurus.

Sikhism rejects caste, and affirms the equality of women and men, from its foundation.

Remember God — keep the divine name present in the mind through meditation and recitation.

Earn honestly — make an honest living by one’s own effort, without exploitation.

Share with others — give from what you earn, so that no one around you goes without.

Selfless service given without expectation of reward or recognition.

The free kitchen attached to every gurdwara, where anyone of any background sits on the same floor and eats the same meal. Instituted by Guru Nanak as equality made edible.

The Wise Lord — one God, creator of all that is good, worshipped without image.

Truth, order and righteousness: the pattern the universe is meant to follow, and which human beings are asked to uphold.

Falsehood and disorder — the opposing principle. Life is the arena in which each person chooses between the two.

Zoroastrianism places responsibility squarely on the individual. No one is compelled; everyone chooses, and everyone answers for the choice.

Fire, water, earth and air are honoured as pure creations to be kept from pollution — an ethic of environmental care built into the religion’s ritual life.

What is thought comes first: the intention behind an act determines its worth.

Speech that is truthful and does not harm. Zoroastrian ethics treat the broken promise as a serious wrong.

Right action, following from right thought and right speech. Together these three words summarise the whole of the faith.