What is a Religious Covenant?

Twentieth century theologian Martin Buber described human being as the promise-making, promise-breaking, and promise-remaking creature. We have an animal’s body, an intelligence artificially mimicked, and a consciousness of our existence and surroundings that we have come to see is shared on a lesser scale with other species on the planet. We are connected to other creatures and facets of creation in a web of relationships that make us part of the organism that is earth. Yet, there are unique, distinguishing characteristics. One such part of human nature that becomes a mechanism for our capacity to shape existence creatively in this: We make agreements. We promise.

We bind ourselves to one another beyond blood ties, ethnicity, tribalism, and nationalism through voluntarily made agreements. We consent to transactions all throughout the day. We buy groceries and at the checkout counter complete an agreement with the owner with money, “promissory” notes. We drop our children off at the local school and engage in an agreement with one another as to how to raise democratic citizens, the “promise” of the future. We come home to partners whom we love in a way different from all others by virtue of having tendered vows with and to them, “I do hereby promise…” Agreements not only form the contours of our lives but they give meaning to our days and prepare us and others for the events life brings.

A covenant is an agreement between persons created by a freely given promise. A religious covenant is one where the agreement includes transcendent, symbolic meanings as an addition to the promise. A covenant is not a contract. A contract too is an agreement based upon promises, but it is bound by the parameter of reciprocity. When parties to a contract agree, it is for an exchange upon which if one party reneges, the agreement is voided. The judgment needed by the parties is defined by whether the contract has or has not been satisfied; that is, whether it is positive to the self-interest of the parties involved as they understand their own self-interest. Not so with a religious covenant. A religious covenant is an agreement that is bound by the parameter of forgiveness. When it is broken, both parties exercise judgment in assessing the nature of the relationship created by the agreement, with the knowledge that the agreement depends upon forgiveness for its continuation. Self-interest is present but it is not the sole or primary criteria for the success of the religious covenant because it is recognized by the parties involved to possess a meaning larger than what the parties alone bring to it or can know themselves. A religious covenant creates meaning and thereby enlarges creation because it is a tie that is maintained by affection and strengthened by the willingness of the parties to bear the burdens of another, towards an unknown future. Therefore, it is formed by a love and devotion shared by human beings. And the “aim” of a religious covenant is not the satisfaction of self-interest as the parties perceive it to be so, but transformation. The covenantal relationship depends upon the parties realizing it has an effect larger than what they alone can determine or surmise. Therefore, it has the element of faith to it.

In religion a covenant becomes a promise entered into by human beings whereby there is created a spiritual “people” who see their future bound up with one another. In my Unitarian Universalist faith tradition the covenant is described as a promise by spiritual seekers “to walk together,” as the form and discipline of the communal spiritual life. The promise does not necessarily suppose theological agreement nor depend upon conformity, as is the case in faith communities formed by creeds and formalized theological doctrines. But, the agreement does depend upon the maintenance of customs and practices; that is, behaviors and expectations of relationships that keep the agreement intact, deepen it for the persons involved, and maintain is transformative capacities, its transcendent and religious quality. The aim of the walk is to share a destiny with others in the faith that it is through the fulfillment of affectional bonds that human beings are transformed towards becoming freer and freer creations; that is, that individuality, and the freedom of the fully functioning self, comes into being through the transformational nature of the bonds of love.

By being the nature and basis of religious community formation, covenantal ties create a kind of community and an understanding of religion and the spiritual life that is foreign to much of what passes for religion today, with its emphasis on a Truth that is absolute and exclusive, and procured and possessed. You might ask a practitioner of the covenantal path a question that does not relate to his or her form of the spiritual life: “What does your church believe?” The answer might sound confusing, because in this form of the spiritual life, churches don’t “believe” things, individuals do. It is the aim of covenantal communities formed in this way for spiritual purposes, to liberate and cultivate the spirit; that is, to declare a unity and freedom of the Spirit expressed through a love for all souls as the direction towards which the covenanted community is “walking together.”

Dr. Brent A. Smith, Minister
All Souls Community Church (Unitarian Universalist)
Grand Rapids, Michigan

Why a Duck?

The Marx Brothers’ famous bit, “Why a Duck?” puts the question of the “why?” of anything at the forefront. Why talk about something “religious” like “covenant” in relation to the heritage of liberal theology, a liberal religious faith legacy like Unitarian Universalism, and within the experience of spiritual community? I think one of the chief characteristics of our age is the way that moderns collapse religion into politics; that the line that marks the difference has become so obscured that religious declaration without political partisan position is unthinkable. In politics that is ideology, but in religion it is idolatry; that is, when one maintains one’s position (today it would have political connotations) as the will of the Almighty. In our particular culture’s “civil wars” it might be well to start with one of the remembered phrases from another time of divisive cultural disturbance: “The Almighty has his own ways.” (Lincoln’s Second Inaugural)

One of the origins of this idolatry amongst liberals is the inability and/or the unwillingness to see their perspectives within an historical tradition of theological thinking, as part of the ideas that form a life of faith, and the disciplines, customs, and practices that give shape to spiritual community. Liberalism is understood predominantly as a political “duck,” and a particular kind of political and ideological “duck” at that, “outside” of liberalism as well as “inside” it. In my 23 years of ministry within a liberal religious tradition, living in and working with congregations, this is the single most prevalent roadblock: the unwillingness and/or inability of liberals to roots themselves in a heritage of theological discourse and a legacy of religious ideas informing the life of faith. When it comes to using religious language to inform and shape experience liberals have largely adopted the disclaimer of Herman Melville’s 19th century character, Bartleby the Scrivener: “I’d prefer not to.”

Language is, of course, a vehicle for conveying meaning, and can be a “public” tether connecting us in relationship to others in our time, others of previous times, and to generations yet to be. Language seeks connections or severs them. Even though it is imprecise and leads to as much misunderstanding as illumination, language still can bind people together in fellowship as surely as does shared experiences. In conversation companionship and camaraderie can be created. In attempts to make religion and the religious “relevant” and “true” to the individual’s experience, though, liberals have tried creating new religious languages, ironically yielding an abdication of religious language. The evidence in my own faith tradition is the emphasis on developing a “language of reverence,” as if religious language can be conjured up immediately, “out of time,” and without ties to history as the accumulation of the interpretations of human experience. The evidence in the culture is the political strategy of the Democratic Party to begin “faith-talk” hoping to make in-roads in that political constituency of the religiously fluent. How cynical and ironic! By any measure these attempts cut off the very conversation that language is meant to continue. Liberals cannot talk to the culture about the varieties of religious experience. Hence, religious experience either is exclusive, or is not perceived in the individual’s life at all.

Liberals today are religiously liberal; that is, holding “religiously” to a liberal interpretation of politics and policies. But devoid of religious language, one is severed from the life of faith. There are few liberal religionists. There are few who seek the theological meanings of ideas of community which incarnate liberalis; that is, which are broad-minded, generous, and worthy of free persons. For community to evidence this, a fundamental connection needs be lifted up to which various individuals can give devotion. Liberals are severed from the legacy of faith that gave rise to, and ultimate meaning for, the fundamental connection that binds persons in free religious fellowship and union. One becomes an anomaly in seeking to live out an understanding of faith, religion, God, Jesus, and thus, human nature that is faithful to liberalis as the aim and meaning of community.

Language is a dialectical pursuit with actual experience. You can’t talk about the life of faith without living on the inside of it and the communities that help form and seek to embody it. This is as true of spiritual communities formed for liberalis as it is for those formed to maintain doctrinal purity. The woman who is by herself is not free. She is alone. And you can’t produce a religious language any more than you can share religious experiences without communicating them. The man who conceives of the spiritual life as the absence or severing of connections to family, friends, neighborhood, city, country, and world is rarely religious and doesn’t possess a spiritual identity. He exists without meaning and purpose.

Recovering a life of faith as a liberal Religionist begins with placing one’s life under "disciplines of the free spirit." And part of those disciplines includes conceiving and interpreting one’s life using the framework provided by religious language as it is language about liberalis. It can’t be language conjured out of nothing, nor just “faith-talk.” It is borne out of a continuous connection with the history and tradition where a spiritual relationship with God is sought through a liberating walk with others. To be shaped by the language of faith one needs live a life of faith. In the larger liberal theological tradition, and in the Unitarian Universalist faith tradition, “covenant” is one of those “connective” words that conveys religious meaning out of walking inside a religious community and a particular faith perspective. Thus, this particular “duck” and its “why.”

Dr. Brent A. Smith, Minister
All Souls Community Church (Unitarian Universalist)
Grand Rapids, Michigan

The Mission (aim and purpose) of This Blog

The Mission (Aim and Purpose) of this Blog

This site presents spiritual ideas and theological concepts and ruminations as derived from my experience within religious communities formed by covenants; and whose chief aim as communal agreements are to shape the individual’s spiritual life as a disciplined endeavor to walk in the ways of God as they are made known through freedom. These ideas, concepts, and ruminations are themselves the products of years of practicing my faith life within the Unitarian Universalist tradition through ministering to and with churches in that heritage. Unitarian Universalism is a faith tradition that combines two distinct but old and related faith traditions, Unitarianism and Universalism. Both of these traditions have their historical roots in Christianity, are non-creedal and non-doctrinal in nature, are “liberal” theologically; that is, are shaped by a long history of understanding God as the origin and aim of the liberty of the mind to think without doctrinal restrictions, and the liberty of the heart to mirror the generosity of God’s own affectional nature by extending a love to all souls. The mission of this blog is, like the aim and purpose of liberal religious faiths like Unitarian Universalism and the spiritual communities formed to manifest them, to liberate and cultivate the spirit. The inspiration for this is all the people I have known who have lived the life of the free spirit in spiritual community, and who are the hope of the world. The mistakes and misinterpretations in content are mine.

Dr. Brent A. Smith, Minister
All Souls Community Church (Unitarian Universalist)
Grand Rapids, Michigan