The Theological Value of Consent

The first use of the written ballot on the shores of the North American continent was in Salem, Massachusetts in the early 17th century, when those European spiritual pioneers elected their religious leaders. It was an act emanating from the bond of affection, the covenant, that formed them into a spiritual community. The significance in terms of church governance, polity, is palpable. No longer would the church’s leadership be determined by an ecclesiastical hierarchy, but by the consent of the governed. “Christ’s Representative on Earth” – by which clergy were known then – would be chosen not by the diocese but the denizens, not through apostolic succession but by spiritual rights. It was the culmination of what had been hinted at in the Reformation. In essence the individual stood before God with no intermediary, and it was only a finite existence of limits and conditions whereby that immediate and direct relationship was compromised. The temptation was, and is always before us to elevate things of this finite world to infinite status, including the symbolic mediators of the sacred. Human consent and responsibility – free will – is an awesome and mighty thing perhaps because it is the evidence of something more.

The theological ramification is revolutionary, but it would take another two centuries until William Ellery Channing fully exposed it. Human beings bear a Divine Likeness, and it is through individual consent whereby that likeness is borne into reality. We call God Creator, and through human consent we emulate that creativity. Humanity gives shape to the world, creates meaning in existence, and can propel creation towards its fulfillment through this coarchy with the Ultimate. And, humanity can distort and disfigure creation through activities that compound the tyranny of self and others by aligning with the principalities and powers that diminish creativity and threaten to sever our relationship with the Spirit.

The theological value of consent is that it is the evidence in human nature of God’s image, and is expressed most fully when we consent to enter into and deepen loving relationships. But we do not commonly conceive of the theological value of consent, nor act as if it is the presence of God that it is. Nor do we, who live and move within a faith tradition that harbors the theology of covenant, understand consent as part of the path that is our spiritual identity and practice. We don’t talk about it that way and haven’t learned to read our lives that way.

James Luther Adams, a Unitarian Universalist and one of the 20th century’s great theologians, pulled the brush aside on the path to our spiritual identity and practice, explaining how some concepts “become” religious concepts, words “become” symbols of something sacred:

“Human social existence requires the achievement of a means of communicating about social existence, a characteristic feature of which is the invention of concepts. Concepts do not come down from heaven; they have to be invented… [Theological] discourse… picks up a concept from ordinary experience and gives it a new and expanded meaning. A concept that originally applies to one aspect of existence is reinterpreted to explain the whole of existence. We call this process the radicalizing of a concept.” (The Prophetic Covenant and Social Concern, James Luther Adams)

Members of All Souls Community Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the church with whom I am in covenant as its minister, talk about “walking together” to describe the community’s spiritual life. Thus, the two words become invested with new meanings that bear upon the whole of existence and expand the possible experiences of God. Thus for me, being guided by the influence of our covenant, a stroll on a downtown street just isn’t the same again! Our spiritual forbear John Winthrop held that relationships forming spiritual community are as a “city upon the hill.” Thereafter, can your home congregation and hometown not be seen differently? Jesus likened the “kingdom of God” to a landowner hiring laborers for his vineyard, and invests ultimate meanings in “laborers” and in “vineyards” and the manner and consequence of "hiring."

Any ordinary thing in this world can be a symbol for the transformative capacities inherent in finite existence. That’s part of the history of our spiritual identity. Any ordinary thing can be a signpost for the liberating presence and possibility of Love. But our view is distinctive and enduring. The ancient Hebrews took the concept of a treaty between political entities and radicalized it into the concept of “covenant” to describe the relationship between God and the Hebrew people. And our spiritual ancestors used a covenant to gather a new community from a new relatedness proffering a new being, over against authoritarian structures of understanding and fellowship. It is part of the theological and spiritual yield of the Salem vote.

Our forbears made the first step in the exodus from authoritarianism by creating a bond of fellowship and affection amongst persons to be seen and understood as the spiritual and divine product it is. The consequence of that covenant was the possibility of freedom and the fulfillment of creation it can bring through human activity. The Catholic priest can serve mass alone. The Muslim can practice Salat by herself. The individual Jew is a Jew. But a Unitarian Universalist needs a congregation, a covenant, so much so that when she lives in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula hours away from any visible gathering of the faithful, the Church of the Larger Fellowship convenes regularly for worship in her mailbox!

Covenant is a concept taken from the various agreements we make everyday, from the willingness to kneel in prayer with someone we don’t know all that well, to the life partner we’ve chosen for better or worse, to the teacher to whom we entrust our child, to the boss or co-worker or employee we supervise. Agreements are ordinary things. But to us, certain kinds of agreements unlock sacred and holy dimensions to this life when their roots are in the expanse of human affection and their branches bud into the virtues of freedom. Or, as 20th century Unitarian minister Napoleon Lovely wrote, “The bonds of love keep open the gates of freedom.”

We take the ordinary qualities inherent to certain agreements - to covenants which are formed by affection and aimed at freedom - and we radicalize them. Equality and fairness make relationships spiritual, while inequality and disparity, the yield of authoritarian relationships, makes them profane. Mutuality, promises, roles and responsibilities, lines of authority, distribution of power - these qualities simultaneously contain an ordinary relevance and an ultimate meaning. Covenantal relationships prize persuasive discourse over coercive submission, the separation and balance of power, dissent and critique, and distinct individuality as necessary to and the aim of a relationship. The creation of holy bonds cherishes spoken discourse as a spiritual practice and “walking together” as a spiritual discipline. They involve God and human being together, a coarchy in the promise of creation’s future fulfillment in the liberation of all souls. A covenant of Being. A theology of covenant is our gift to the world. The spiritual life expressing that covenant is our gift to the world.

But of all these qualities, derived from relationships seen through the possibility of their sacredness, through covenant, it is individual consent that is the symbolic reflection in human nature of God’s creative intent and the arc of the moral universe. It the underlying spiritual nature of simple requests that beg the Ultimacy of human bonds: “Do you take this woman or this man in the bonds of a holy union?” “Will you pray with me?” “Can you sit with me for a while?” “Will you join the church and walk with this community?”

Individual consent is also what is most misunderstood and distorted by us. It is not to be belittled into personal preference, the self’s desires or needs or wants, the kind of “what-I-like-becomes-absolute-truth” disregard for covenant that claims a spiritual community is simply the largest number of possible private preferences fulfilled. Individual consent is not selfoatry writ large. It is not the oppression of absolute subjectivity. The devotion to self-interest that yields spiritual license is not the bonds of affection that give birth to freedom.

Individual consent is involved in sacrifice, but not the sacrifice that gives up consent and individuality; rather, the sacrifice which, by giving consent to something larger then self, brings about the prospect of the New Being through the New Relationships grounded in Love. Individual consent - that human nature contains the capacity to give consent to enter loving relationships that are the foundation of freedom and human identity - most fully expresses our divine likeness. Consent is the evidence in human nature that we emulate the Creator by our own creativity. To live inside of relationships born of that creative affection is a special, powerful gift that transcends narrow allegiances that end with self; to walk with others in this way is to live in the closest proximity to what animates all of life. Spiritual community then becomes what it is suppose to become: the Free Church! God appears in the eyes of others who all have been made in that divine image, too! So the invitation to love God and your neighbor as yourself, becomes two different ways to walk in a common direction!