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