About Us:

Westminster Presbyterian Church sits in the center of downtown Auburn, New York, surrounded by the William Seward House, the YMCA, Auburn City Hall, and the Cayuga County Offices and Courthouse. First and foremost, it is a house of God, where people worship, learn, ask questions, engage in mission and service, and find their way on their individual faith journeys in the fellowship of others. An active and busy place all week long, it is home to the Westminster Nursery School, Westminster Employment Counseling, the offices of the Merry Go Round Playhouse,  the offices of the Human Rights Commission, the site of the Adams Foundation Piano Series, and the host of many other events, programs, recitals, concerts, and meetings of not-for-profit agencies and community service.programs. Worship is at 9:30am every Sunday, with education, fellowship, and mission opportunities for all ages and interests.

While we look pretty traditional on the surface, Westminster isn't what many people imagine a church to be like. We have members who have a broad range of spiritual beliefs, but overall we’re a decidedly progressive congregation. We’re committed to a theology that welcomes and encourages curiosity, discovery, questions, inquisitiveness, and non-traditional ways of understanding the faith. We’re deeply committed to issues of social justice, and have been since our very beginning - we began as an abolitionist congregation during the Civil War, and we've kept opening our doors wider ever since. We affirm the full inclusion of all God’s people - we welcome people of every race, gender, age, sexual orientation or gender identity, family status and economic status into the full participation of our church life. 

Westminster is a member congregation of the Presbyterian Church (USA), the largest of the various Presbyterian denominations in the U.S. We trace our roots to the writings of the 16th century theologian John Calvin, making us part of the Reformed tradition of Protestantism. But we don't just blindly or exclusively follow Calvin. Our Constitution includes expressions of the core beliefs of our faith, written in the 1930s to oppose Nazism; in the 1960s to promote racial and gender equality; and in the 1980s to condemn South African apartheid and promote racial reconciliation. We are, according to a key motto of our faith tradition, "The Church, Reformed and Always Being Reformed according to the Word of God.