Between Us – Covenant for Canton?
By Rev. Clyde Grubbs, January 27, 2023
I’ve been writing about covenant lately. My last two columns in this newsletter were about covenant. We had a “coffee hour discussion” about the redrafting process that the whole Unitarian Universalist Association has embarked upon involving the words of the covenant that forms our Association.
Talking about covenant is important because it is how Unitarian Universalist Congregations constitute themselves. We see ourselves as a freely constituted religious organization, and we come together to achieve a purpose. The individuals promise each other (covenant) that they will work for that purpose.
The congregations then covenant with each other to form an association. Most of our religious education classes begin their coming together by agreeing on their own covenant. Many of you have participated in a small covenant group here at First Parish. There are many other examples in our tradition. In all cases, the association is voluntary and based on promises.
Individuals are accountable for their promises, and therefore the promises are given life by the efforts of the people who have covenanted together. There are other ways to organize a religious community; the European kings had their state churches, and now days the Pope and his Bishops can establish a church by fiat.
Congregational churches are bottom-up rather than top-down.
The UUA is revising its covenant and our coffee hour discussion prompted me to ask, does First Parish have a covenant? I observe that the congregation doesn’t have an agreed-upon vision of where it’s going and what its purpose is. To agree as a congregation on where the congregation wants to go together is aspirational, based on a vision together and empowered by a commitment together.
Covenants that are deep create strongly committed congregations. Deep commitments do not come about quickly; there must be a lot of visioning work done by the congregation about where it wants to go for a visionary aspiration covenant, and a lot of commitment to each other.
I have seen congregations commit themselves to the work of love and find meaning in creating a covenant. A congregational church constitutes itself in covenant, and in 2023 First Parish in Canton UU lacks a powerful covenant.
Rev. Clyde