It's not a Christian church in the sense that it does not require belief in the doctrines of the established Christian churches. At the same time, the Gnostic movement was an alternative version of Christianity, founded on a conviction that the doctrines of the established Christian churches falsify the essential message of the Master Jesus, and its priesthood and priestesshood claimed the same kind of lineal descent from Jesus that the Catholic, Orthodox, Ethiopian, and other estabished Christian churches do. The short form? It's part of our heritage.