If you were at Community Sunday in July, you may have participated in a conversation session about the UUCC Covenant of Right Relations. The covenant was adopted by congregational vote in May of 2021. One of the board’s goals this year is to lift up the covenant and begin to really look at how it impacts our relationships and interactions within the community, so you can expect to see more offerings and conversation on the topic. In service to that goal, here’s a refresher on where covenant came from and what it means to us today. Click here if you’d like to view the whole service, youtube.com/live/F0JIW067QWI.
As a non-creedal tradition, covenant is fundamental to our identity as Unitarian Universalists. Rather than being held together by shared beliefs, we rely on our relational promises to keep us together. Congregational Polity is a fundamental underpinning of our understanding. So is the Cambridge Platform.
An excerpt from the sermon:
For Unitarian Universalist congregations, our covenants are the foundational structure that undergirds our communities. They are the promises that bind us together. Each one of us freely chooses to enter into the covenant when we join the community as members. And the community itself is part of the promise. We do not make our promises to God or before God. We are not held accountable by some external force. We make our promises to and with this community. And entering into a covenant makes us accountable to one another.
We make mistakes. All of us. We disagree, we disappoint and hurt one another. When I have been in conflict or hurt within our UU communities, I have tried to return to right relationship. Because I have voluntarily entered into the covenants we share. I have been invited to make amends, to learn, and to do better next time. And I have invited others to do the same. It is not easy, but each time I am called to go deeper into my own commitments, to allow myself to be vulnerable, and to honor the vulnerability offered to me by others.
This is complicated, messy, heart-centered work. And in this time and place, we begin with the covenant that this congregation approved in May of 2021.
If you’re not familiar with the UUCC covenant, here it is:
As members of the Unitarian Universalist Community of Charlotte, we are committed to the seven UU principles, respect our Vision and Mission, and embrace being a Welcoming Congregation. We strive to treat everyone with dignity and respect, to care about and to be connected to one another, and to listen in an open-minded manner. We make the following promises to further our path in being the loving, liberating religious community that our Vision calls on us to be.
Welcome members and visitors alike with warmth and hospitality;
Speak for ourselves and listen to all with attention and kindness;
Understand that we are all works in progress in our life journeys, and recognize that everyone faces both joys and challenges that may be unknown to us, as ours are to them;
Remain open to understanding that we can learn and grow from our connections to people with both similar and differing viewpoints;
Embrace the diversity within and beyond our community, knowing it makes us a stronger, more loving and compassionate community;
Give of ourselves to the UUCC as a whole, to individual members and to those in the larger community as we are able;
Respect that our membership makes decisions by seeking unity and consensus among our members, enacting changes by majority vote, which may not always align with our personal desires;
Accept reminders of our covenant when other people may feel that we’re failing to adhere to these promises, committing to resolve conflicts by engaging in potentially difficult conversations without straying from our promise to treat each person with love, respect, and dignity.
I look forward to more conversation and study regarding this document that lays out the promises you have made to one another. Looking for more resources about covenant? Look no further!
2021 Commission on Appraisal Report: Unlocking the Power of Covenant
Southern Region Blog, Boundaries and Covenant, by Connie Goodbread