“A RELIGIOUS COVENANT”

 

A Sermon by the Rev. Bruce Clear

Sunday, November 14, 2004

All Souls Unitarian Church

Indianapolis, Indiana

 

            Those of you who only know Unitarian and Universalist churches through the eyes of this church may not realize there is something unusual here. 

            I know, know – every church I've ever encountered believes that it is unique, that there is no other church like it, that it is remarkable in its singularity, if not its peculiarity.  Every church I know thinks of itself this way, and every church I know is wrong.  All churches I know are a lot more alike than they are different.  There are very few exceptions.  But, there are a few exceptions.  And, well, All Souls, it turns out, is an exception.

            One thing that is unusual about All Souls is not only that  it has a covenant that is read aloud each week (which doesn't hap­pen in many UU churches I know), and not only that peo­ple stand to read it, but also that it is written right there on the wall, in an honored spot, at the site where, in traditional Christ­ian churches, you'll find a large cross, or where, in Jewish syna­gogues, you'll find their covenant, the Torah, kept in its hal­lowed spot. 

            Those of you who may not know other UU churches may not realize how unusual this is. 

            It is unusual.  It is refreshing because it symbolizes, and I think addresses, one of the most perplexing issues about who we are.  It is the issue of the role of the individual in community. 

            Our tradition honors the worth of every individual.  It is right there at the beginning of the list of UU Principles we promote.  Respect for the individual is so central to our tradition that we refuse allegiance to any creed and encourage people to explore different beliefs on their own religious quest.  We disavow any creedal state­ments, not because any specific creed is wrong, but rather because we honor more the authority of each person to shape her or his own beliefs – as long as they fit within the central values of this covenant. 

            Some may look at a covenant, such as ours, and think it looks a lot like a creed.  It is not.  A “creed” – the word is a Latin derivative from the verb "to believe” – prescribes what one must believe.  A covenant concerns not belief, but relationship:  how we agree to relate to one another.  My attorney friends tell me that in its legal sense, a "covenant" is indistinguishable from a contract, that it defines a relationship and obligation.  In its religious sense a covenant also defines a relationship.  It does not prescribe belief.  A person could believe sincerely, I sup­pose, that the moon is made of green cheese and still abide by a covenant.

 

            The tradition of individualism is a great American tradition, as well as a Unitarian tradi­tion.  Perhaps the boldest literary symbol of individual success is the Horatio Alger rags-to-riches series of a century ago.  It is no coinci­dence that Horatio Alger, the author, was a Unitarian minister.  The greatest prophet of American individualism was the essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose essay on "Self-reliance" was a virtual hymn to the autonomous individual.  It is no coincidence that Emerson was a Unitar­ian, speaking mostly to Unitarian audiences.

            No society I know, no church that I know, values the individual more highly than our society and our church.  It is written into the constitution of our nation and into the by-laws of our religious association that the individual is granted independence in matters of belief. 

            Individualism is the great virtue that America has offered the political world and that our movement has offered the relig­ious world.  However, it has been pointed out that there is no virtue that cannot be turned into a vice when it is left unre­strained.  Individualism, I hasten to point out, is not exempt from that rule.

            Individualism can become corrupted when it is interpreted as permission for selfish­ness, or isolation.  This can happen, and it does happen, whenever we overlook the obvious fact that individuals are nurtured by community, and that human indi­viduals need community to be fulfilled.  Unrestrained individualism, whether in a society or in a church, puts the self above the good of the larger community. 

            The best way I know to retain respect for individual worth and dignity without individual­ism degenerating into self-centeredness is by way of the covenantal tradition.  The word "covenant" has religious roots, and to explain its religious role, I need to take a trip back in history, at least to the time of the Pilgrims.  (Actually, as I mentioned last week, the word "covenant" has pre-Christian, ancient Hebrew roots as well, but my intent here is to trace its Unitarian origins.)

            I take my cue this morning from Conrad Wright, a lead­ing Unitarian historian, and emeritus professor at Har­vard.   In a number of books, Wright traces our religious gene­alogy to the Pilgrims, and he specifically identifies the Pilgrim tradition of "covenant" as one that we inherited. 

            The covenantal tradition first became important in the writing of the Mayflower Compact, an agreement that was subscribed to prior to their landing on these shores.  From Governor Bradford's records in 1620, the Com­pact, in part, said this:

 

"We whose names are underwritten, the loyal subjects of our dread soveraigne Lord King James.... by these presents solemnly & mutually in ye presence of God, and one another, covenant, & combine ourselves together into a Civill body politick...." 

 

            While the Compact is filled with theo­logical references that are easily stumbled over, it is clear that this is not a creedal state­ment.  Nothing in the document requires anyone to subscribe to a particular belief.  It is not a creed; it is a covenant – a prom­ise by each one involved to work together toward a common cause.  Strip away the excess words, keep only the subject, verb and predicate, and here is what they said:

 

            "We... covenant and combine ourselves together...."

 

            The sense of covenant, the sense of working together does not (and this is key) threaten the principle of individual auton­omy.  If I were to paraphrase this compact and put it into more casual language for today, it would simply say this:

 

"We're all in this together.  So we'll care for one another, look out for each others' interests.  Together, we'll form a society that respects the needs and concerns of each member.  We can­not do that alone, so we pledge to do it together."

            A covenant means a voluntary agreement among indi­viduals concerning not what they believe, but how they relate to one another, what their promises are to each other, and what they accept as their common concern. 

            Conrad Wright has shown our inheri­tance today of this covenantal, rather than creedal, tradition.  In his book entitled Walking Together, he documents the historical origins of that tradition, such as from the Mayflower Compact.  Here is another place in which he highlights the tradition, and from which he gets the title of his book:

 

"The earliest New England covenants of which we have record were simple statements.  The Salem covenant of 1629 is as follows:  'We Covenant with the Lord and one with another; and doe bynd our selves in the presence of God, to walke together in all his waies, according as he is pleased to reveale himself unto us in his Blessed word of truth.' 

 

"While there are words here with theo­logical significance, such as 'Lord,' and 'God,' and 'his Blessed word of truth,' it should be remarked that this was not a creedal statement.  The operative words here are:  'we... doe bynd our selves... to walke together.' They are not: 'we be­lieve.'

 

"So in a few of our churches, ancient covenants still serve their essential func­tion:  to make churches out of collec­tions of individuals; to establish community.”

 

            The Salem church he was talking about became Unitarian in the 1820s.  But Wright could also have been making that observation about All Souls, as well.

 

            People often ask me, "If Unitarian Universalists don't nec­essarily agree about religious beliefs, what is it that holds them together?"  It's a very good question.  It's also a very natural question.  Most religions we know in our culture are held together by bonds of a creed.  What holds them together is a common statement that says, "We believe...." That is not so with us.

            But if the statement "We believe" does not hold us together, what do we turn to? The answer is found in the word "covenant," the word chosen by the Pilgrims as their bond of union as far back as 1620. 

 

            It's no wonder that people are perplexed by how Unitarians can have a church.  Our religious movement balances a delicate paradox:  that individual conscience is supreme in matters of religious belief, but also that individuality is best nurtured by a supportive community – a covenant.  We are at our best when we nurture a diversity among us: diverse in religious and philosophical and political and social perspectives.

            A covenant includes a pledge to each other to walk together, not in shared beliefs but in shared destiny.  In our case the covenanting value includes respect for each person's indi­vidual worth and one's own individual search for relig­ious meaning. 

            In the reading this morning from Alice Blair Wesley, she says it this way: 

 

Our covenant is simply our promise that we shall together seek truth and support one another as we dare, whatever the cost, to live by the truths we cannot help believing we have found at any particular time, and to support one another in doubt in those times when we can't find or can't decide what the relevant truth is.  The free church is held together by, inso­far as we live by, the spirit of this promise. 

 

            Let me try it in different words, words I used a little earlier this morning.  A covenant is an explicit acknowledgment, so obviously miss­ing from much of contemporary culture, that "we're all in this together, and we care about one another."  

            I am convinced that a religious congre­gation is one of the most valuable assets we, as individuals, have in contemp­orary society.  There are very few places left that invite that sense of covenant, walking together in mutual support. 

            A religious congregation is a place where people can join with others, as families or individuals, with people of all ages, to laugh and have fun, to explore deep issues of life, to work together for a better world, to find support in times of personal crisis, and to reach for higher aspirations. 

            Now there are other groups that do all these things – but usually just one at a time.  There are social groups for having fun, there are educa­tional groups for exploring ideas, there are activist groups for promoting special causes, and there are support groups for helping us through personal crises.  But to my know­ledge, relig­ious congregations are, in our society, the only kind of group that aspires to offer this whole range of experience.

            For such a group to work, it requires a sense of covenant, that individuals agree and covenant to walk together in mutual support. 

            Belonging to a congrega­tion has very little meaning with­out that sense of covenant.   The spirit of covenant means we receive from a group at least in rough proportion to what we are willing to contribute to the group.

            I am impressed by the sense of covenant among the people of this congregation.  The number of committees that work (and work well) here is unusual among congregations I have known.  I cannot help but believe that the effectiveness of this congregation is somehow tied to the prominence of its own sense of covenant, of the unusual fact that it reaffirms that covenant weekly.

            Of course no congrega­tion is perfect, just as no human being is perfect – that is the case with all human institutions.  Robert McAfee Brown, a professor of religion at Princeton, once claimed (tongue in cheek) that he had discovered the following astounding sentence in a medieval manuscript:  "The church is something like Noah's Ark; if it were not for the storm outside, we could not stand the smell inside." 

            It is an exaggeration, but the point is made humorously:  that human endeavors, even with the best of inten­tions, often fail. 

 

            The fact that our tradition is non-creedal makes the covenantal need even heavier.  In his history of colonial relig­ions, Conrad Wright points out that when many churches quickly began to develop creedal covenants, it was the liberal churches that resisted.  That is us.  Here is what he wrote:

 

When doctrinal divergence began to appear in New Eng­land churches in the eighteenth century, creedal covenants be­gan to come into use.  The purpose was to maintain the (theolog­ical) purity of the churches.  This seemed to the liberals of the day to be an unfortunate develop­ment, if not a corruption of the congre­gational tradition.  At any rate, we would no doubt agree that creedal covenants have no place in the doctrine of the church. 

 

[But the sense of] "covenant" survives in our [Unitarian] churches.  There is a commitment to participate in the life of a community of religiously concerned men and women.  And so long as the opera­tive wording is "we unite," and not "we believe," the essential form of the liberal church is there. 

 

            Conrad Wright's essay on the Unitarian covenantal tradi­tion was adapted from a sermon he delivered some years before to the First Parish of Cam­bridge, the Harvard Unitarian Church.  He took for a text a verse from the third chapter of the Old Testament book of Amos:  "Can two walk together except they be agreed?"   What the prophet Amos wanted to know was whether people who dis­agreed in religious belief could join together in common relig­ious effort:  "Can two walk together except they be agreed?"

            Unitarians answer that question boldly. We can walk together amid broad diversity of belief.  In fact it is our com­mitment to honoring individual differences that brings us to walk together at all.  Can two walk together except they be agreed?  Yes, but only if they covenant to walk together. 

            "Covenant" is the word used by the Pilgrims.  "Walking together" is the phrase used by Conrad Wright.  I have chosen to say it this way this morning:  "We're in this together, and we care about each other." 

            We're in this together as a community:  children and sen­iors, long-time members and newcomers, humanists, mystics, Christians, Buddhists, rich, poor, gay, straight, Republican, Democrat, old, young, whatever race or ethnic background, whatever life experience or religious background, whatever occupation or educational background.  We're all in this together.

            The sense of covenant is an antidote to a great deal of ill that can be found around us.  It is the antidote to selfishness, the attitude that demands of all policies that demand, "what's in it for me."  And I would add that it is the antidote to a great deal of loneliness.

 

            So I close with affirming the peculiar practice here in this church.  It is to our advantage that this covenant is cele­brated and recited weekly, and that it is displayed in such a place of honor.  It is a testament to the heritage of not just this church, but to the tradition and history from which this church arose.

 

            One final comment from Conrad Wright is worth noting:

 

[The covenant] we share is created, sus­tained, and devel­oped by persons who have chosen to walk together.  We have no mechanism by which an applicant for membership is examined or tested by some ecclesiastical authority to make sure that his or her opinions are accept­able.  The boundary lines of our churches are drawn by individual choice, not by official judgment. 

 

There are risks involved to be sure. King's Chapel (a very theologically con­servative UU church in Boston) ends up somewhat differ­ent from a fellowship in California. Some people who join us find that they are in the wrong pew, and move on some­where else – perhaps they go to the Quakers if we are too liturgical for their tastes, perhaps to the Episcopalians if we are not liturgical enough. 

 

But there are others who find at last a place where they belong.  They are the ones whose individual perspectives may be added to enrich the consensus that helps to make a community out of a col­lection of unrelated individuals. 

 

            To Professor Wright's comments I would voice my own "amen."  But let me translate that "amen" into the following words:

 

            "Love is the Spirit of this Church, and service is its law. 

            To dwell together in peace, to seek the truth in love,

                        and to help one another:

            Let this continue to be our covenant."