Doctrinal

In ethics and social sciences, value denotes the degree of importance of some thing or action, with the aim of determining which actions are best to do or what way is best to live (normative ethics), or to describe the significance of different actions. Value systems are proscriptive and prescriptive beliefs; they affect the ethical behavior of a person or are the basis of their intentional activities. Often primary values are strong and secondary values are suitable for changes. What makes an action valuable may in turn depend on the ethical values of the objects it increases, decreases, or alters. An object with "ethic value" may be termed an "ethic or philosophic good" (noun sense).

Values can be defined as broad preferences concerning appropriate courses of actions or outcomes. As such, values reflect a person's sense of right and wrong or what "ought" to be. "Equal rights for all", "Excellence deserves admiration", and "People should be treated with respect and dignity" are representatives of values. Values tend to influence attitudes and behavior and these types include moral values, doctrinal or ideological values, social values, and aesthetic values. It is debated whether some values that are not clearly physiologically determined, such as altruism, are intrinsic, and whether some, such as acquisitiveness, should be classified as vices or virtues.

The Articles of Religion (also called the Twenty-five Articles of Religion or Twenty-five Articles) are an official doctrinal statement of Methodism—particularly American Methodism and its offshoots. John Wesley abridged the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England, removing the Calvinistic parts among others, reflecting Wesley's Arminian theology.

The resulting Twenty-five Articles were adopted at the Christmas Conference of 1784, and are found in the Books of Discipline of Methodist Churches, such as Chapter I of the Doctrines and Discipline of the African Methodist Episcopal Church and paragraph 103 of the United Methodist Church Book of Discipline. They have remained relatively unchanged since 1808, save for a few additional articles added in later years in both the United Methodist tradition and Allegheny Wesleyan Methodist Connection, among other Methodist connexions.