Freedom to believe is a defining characteristic of Unitarian Universalism. Since our earliest beginnings, our faith tradition has upheld the right of individual conscience. We have steadfastly maintained that no one should ever be coerced into professing beliefs which run counter to what their minds and hearts tell them is right and true. And it is because of that freedom to believe that the Unitarian Universalism of today embraces such a wide diversity of theological opinion. We count among us naturalistic theists, religious humanists, atheists, liberal Christians, neo-pagans, and a countless number of variations on any of these theological themes. Of course, we were not always so. Both Unitarianism and Universalism began as movements within the Christian church. Our freedom to believe was attained through a long history of struggle and resistance that were not without cost, even the price of martyr’s blood. How Unitarian Universalism evolved to its present constellation is a truly fascinating story -so much so that I’m sure my class in March on Unitarian Universalist History is going to be mobbed! As they say, see your bulletin for further details.

But back to my point—Freedom to believe, and its corollary, freedom to explore, are hallmarks of Unitarian Universalism. We have no theological test for membership, no creed to which one must ascribe in order to belong. People unfamiliar with Unitarian Universalism often have a hard time getting their minds around this, because in the popular consciousness, what you believe, your creed, is what determines your faith. That a church, a religion, would not have a common belief system defies the imagination of some. And yet, here we stand, a non creedal faith with tremendous diversity of individual belief. But what then holds us together? How, out of all this diversity, do we forge a common identity?

The answer to those questions lie in covenant. What binds us together is the covenant we share, a method of binding a religious community together which we inherited from our Puritan forbears. What is a covenant? Basically, a covenant is simply an agreement of promises made between two parties. The word is sometimes used as a synonym for a quid pro quo contract—you agree to do this and, in return, I agree to that. But a true covenant differs from a contract. When a party to a contract fails to live up to one of the promises made, the contract becomes void and both sides are released from any future obligations. But in a covenant, failing to live up to one of the promises, does not dissolve the agreement. A covenant always holds out the possibility of return and renewal of the original promises. The provisions of a covenant can be broken any number of times, and yet the covenant can still obtain.

Perhaps the most familiar example of a covenant is that of marriage. Marriage is more than a quid pro quo agreement in which one spouse promises to do this and the other promises to do that. Marriage is a covenantal relationship, a freely entered solemn promise to be faithful to one another no matter what life brings—in sickness and in health; for richer, for poorer; through good times and bad. Marriage also involves a recognition that something new is created through the marriage vows which transcends the two separate individuals. Marriage is the commitment to dedicate oneself to nurture and sustain this third thing, the common life the couple now shares. The marriage covenant also implicitly recognizes that the couples’ dedication transcends the particular feelings of the moment. The couple is committed to their mutual love even when they do not feel in love. And yet, all married couples fail their marriage vows, in some way or other. The covenant of marriage is an ideal and no one is that perfect, no one can ever and always put their own ego needs aside; no one for ever and always can love so selflessly. And yet even though marriage vows may be broken, that does not necessarily dissolve the marriage. The covenant remains, calling the couple back to begin again in love. Probably all of us have witnessed this—couples who have survived what from the outside might seem insurmountable betrayal who go on to renew their commitment to one another in a way which may be even deeper than before. Of course, that doesn’t always happen when promises have been broken in a marriage. And hear me when I say this—as one who herself has been divorced—sometimes it simply is not possible to find your way back. Sometimes the will is simply not there, on one side or the other. And sometimes there was simply not enough latitude for individual growth in the original conception of the marriage covenant.

Because you see, an authentic marriage covenant must also recognize that lives are not static. When two people exchange marriage vows they are not crystallized, preserved for ever after as they exist at that one moment before the altar. Partners in a marriage continue to grow and develop, and the vows binding the two must be resilient enough to allow that growth. The marriage itself will, necessarily, change each partner. That is one reason marriage is a covenant rather than a contract. No one could know all that will happen, all the vicissitudes of life the couple will navigate, all the ways in which their engagement with each other will change them. And so no amount of wherefores and heretos could provide for any and all exigencies. A covenant, unlike a contract, must be a living thing.

The analogy of marriage can help us understand what it means to say that covenant is what binds us together in this religious community. Here we voluntarily enter into relationship with one another and here we promise to be there for one another, through whatever changes life brings, in joy and in sorrow. Our commitment to the covenanted community transcends our individual desires and the feelings of any one moment. We have a shared mutual loyalty to the good of the whole. And so, here we treat each other as equals; with respect and affirmation. We make decisions by democratic means; we call and elect our own leaders through a process of shared discernment. Further, by entering into covenant with one another we acknowledge that we will be challenged and changed by this relationship. We promise to truly engage one another, to urge one another to grow in understanding. And our covenant is ideally flexible enough to allow for that growth to happen, both on the part of individuals and on the part of the community as a whole. Our covenant means moving beyond securing our own space into securing space enough for others. We have the right to speak our truth; but we also must hear each other into speech. And we do all this, despite our theological differences. We promise to walk together in love though we may disagree. And though we may fail to live up to the covenant perfectly, though we may break our promises to one another on occasion—and we do—we all do—that does not dissolve the bonds between us. Still the covenant calls us back again and again to renew the bonds of faith and affection.

It is covenant that allows people of such disparate belief to be a religious community. And, in fact, that is one of the reasons why our forbears insisted upon covenant as the basis for the organization of our churches. They wisely saw that only when religious communities were constituted of people who had freely chosen to be in relationship with one another and who were committed to be mutually loyal, would religious freedom be preserved. They understood that the Spirit—the spirit of God, the spirit of ultimate truth—could not be coerced, and that if individuals were to be free to question and to test religious truth against their own experience and conscience, that could only happen in a covenantal atmosphere. It is organization around covenant, rather than creed, which has allowed our movement to evolve over the centuries, to incorporate new understandings and new wisdom.

But there was a still deeper reason why our forbears chose covenant as the glue that binds our churches together. When they used the word covenant they were consciously invoking the history of the usage of that term in the Judeo—Christian tradition. In the Old and New testament, covenant refers to the agreements between the people of faith and God, first the Hebrews and later the Christians. Covenant, biblically understood, is what calls a religious people into being as a people; it defines the relationship between those people of faith and God.

So, you see, when our forbears founded our churches upon covenant, they meant by that more than how we treat one another, or govern ourselves, even more than a way of preserving our hard won freedom. They meant that the relationship that obtains in our churches has a sacred dimension and it is not just between the individuals of the church but between the church and ultimate reality itself. And they also meant that our identity as a church depends upon us being in right relationship with that ultimate reality. When our forbears said we covenant to walk together in love though we may disagree, they understood that the love in which they walked was the love of God, the ground of being itself, which created and sustained and transformed them. Covenant to our forbears was about being faithful, loyal, to ultimate reality.

The question for us as Unitarian Universalists has never been simply what do you believe, but what are our deepest, most abiding convictions; what are those things which are most worthy of our high resolve. Ours is and has been a living tradition. We know that religion must be free to evolve to incorporate new promptings of the spirit, new experiences of what it means to be human and to live in this world. Ultimate truth may ever exceed our grasp, but we know that our ability to apprehend truth, and to gain an ever truer understanding of what is most worthy of our loyalty, depends upon people of good faith and mutuality freely and lovingly dialoging together. Ours is a living tradition, too, in that we have always believed that the test of religious faith is the purpose to which that faith is put, the ways in which we embody what we can discern of truth and goodness and love, the way we put our loyalties to work in the world. Our forbears could not possibly have foreseen exactly where the free spirit would onward lead, but they did have the wisdom to know that a living tradition requires a living covenant, not a static creed.

Our forbears, and we after them, understand way down deep in the marrow of our bones, that amongst all the competing realities of our lives, there must be one community, among all those of which we are a part, where we can openly, and honestly, and with full expectation that we will be well heard and well held, examine with others of like spirit our deepest loyalty and love, so that together we can try to see whether we are living by a worthy love or by allegiance to less than worthy realities. And that community must also be a place where we can try to discern what our love requires of us. We here are mutually dedicated to discerning the spirit of love working among us, for our own sakes and for the sake of the world. We here mutually pledge to seek to discover that which is most meaningful, most loving and true, most worthy of our attention and then to empower one another, and ourselves as a whole, to act in service to these convictions.

Our forbears understood that their covenant was not only between the members of the church but also with God, the name they gave to that which was of ultimate concern. And so we, the heirs to that understanding of covenant, must also understand our covenant to be not only in relation to one another but to that greater reality in which we live and which is not of our own creation, however many different ways we might name it. When we say we covenant to walk together in love though we may disagree, love does not just refer to the way we treat each other, the affection and respect we hold for one another, but it also refers to that in which we walk—that in which we move, and breathe and have our being. And we are not wandering aimlessly, we are walking with a purpose—with an end in mind—that together we might grow in ever more rightful relation to that reality.

We, today, of necessity have a different conception of ultimate reality than did our 16 th century forbears. We know so much more of the nature of space and time. For us today, that greater reality to which we stand in relation is most likely conceived, not in vertical terms, not in a division between this earth and some other realm, but rather as the interdependent web which binds human beings to each other, to all of creation, and to the earth which gives us life—the interdependent web which is everywhere, which is unitary, which is whole. Ultimate reality does not exist in some other dimension. We are embedded in it, part of it.

And that ultimate reality ever speaks to us. It speaks to us every moment in the air we breathe, through the beauty in which we walk, in the food which fuels our bodies. And it speaks to us everyday in the insight and wisdom of all good women and men who throughout the ages have strived to be faithful to the spirit of life and love. It speaks to us in transcending moments of mystery and awe and it speaks to us in the quotidian paths of everyday. There is nowhere we can go that is outside this reality. Everything is holy now.

And yes, we forget this reality. We turn aside, we shutter our ears and eyes. We are not always faithful to our deepest and best understandings. But still that great covenant of being of which we are a part, that great covenant of being in which we move and breathe and have our being, is always there, calling to us, holding out the promise—come, come—whoever you are, even though you may have wandered, even though you may have been lost, come, yet again come.

Regrettably, there is one line of Rumi’s poem that was left out of Lynn Ungar’s song. A line that speaks to the nature of the covenant we share; a line that speaks to the covenant in which we live. The line is: “though you’ve broken your vow a thousand times.” Though you’ve broken your vow a thousand times, ours is no caravan of despair. No matter how we may have forsaken one another; no matter how we may have broken our vow with the web of creation itself, we can return. We can always begin again in love.

Let us here covenant to keep faith with the source of life, the great covenant of being, knowing we are not our own, that earth made us. Let us covenant with one another to seek an ever deeper awareness of how the spirit is moving in us, of what love asks of us. Let us covenant to put our faith into deeds that witness to love and which sustain the covenant of being of which we are a part. And when we fall out of covenant, when we forget our promises to one another and to the creation, let us, in love, call ourselves back, saying, come, yet again, come. Let us covenant to walk forward together in love.

Principle Background Sources

Burton Carley, We Covenant: An Exploration of the History of Covenant from the Mayflower and the Cambridge Platform to the Principles and Purposes of 1985, a paper presented to the Prairie Group, November 12, 2007

Alice Blair Wesley, Our Covenant, The Lay and Liberal Doctrine of the Church: The Spirit and Promise of our Covenant (The 2000-2001 Minns Lectures), Meadville Lombard Theological Press, Chicago, 2002