Our Father,
who art in heaven

Written from Christian sources: the New Testament (World English Bible), the creeds and the churches' own teaching. A Christian reader checks this page before it goes public.

Our Father

The prayer Jesus taught is the most widely shared Christian text: Catholics, Orthodox and Protestants all pray it. Christians call God “Father”: Jesus used the Aramaic Abba in prayer (Mark 14:36), an intimate, family word.

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A Christian telling

▶What is Christianity? | Religious Studies - My Life, My Religion: Christianity · BBC Bitesize for Teachers

One God

Asked which commandment comes first, Jesus quoted the Shema. Christians confess one God, and understand that one God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Catholic Catechism puts it plainly: “We do not confess three Gods, but one God in three persons” (CCC 253). The Church of England's first article of religion says: “There is but one living and true God.”

God is love, and holy

“God is love” (1 John 4:8, WEB) is the most quoted line about God in Christian preaching. At every Eucharist Christians sing Isaiah's “Holy, holy, holy”; Orthodox Christians pray the Trisagion: “Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy on us.” Pope Francis began a letter on mercy: “Jesus Christ is the face of the Father's mercy.”

Christians who say “Allah”

Millions of Christians pray to God as Allah every day. Arabic Bibles read “In the beginning Allah created the heavens and the earth.” Arabic-speaking Christians cross themselves “in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, the One God”: al-Ilāh al-Wāḥid. Orthodox Christians in the Middle East say “Allahu akbar” as an expression of their own faith, and Arab Christians say “inshallah”, pointing to James 4:15: “If the Lord wills.”

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A Christian telling

▶The Lord's Prayer | Arabic · St Luke's Kentish TownPlays on “Allah beyond Islam” →

An old conversation

In 781, in Baghdad, a Christian patriarch, Timothy I, spent two days discussing God and Christ with the Caliph al-Mahdi, in Arabic, courteously and with real disagreement. Timothy compared the Trinity to the sun, its light and its heat. The conversation has never quite stopped.

And Islam?

The Catholic Church teaches that Muslims, “professing to hold the faith of Abraham, along with us adore the one and merciful God” (Lumen Gentium 16, 1964). Not every Christian agrees that it is “the same God”: see Is it the same God?, where all three Christian answers are set out.