If Love Is the Spirit of This Church ...

Every week, this congregation sings an affirmation that begins with the words, “Love is the spirit of this church” – I know this isn’t news to you – but I’m willing to bet that few of you are familiar with its origins, how it has evolved over years, or the circumstances by which it came to be adopted as this congregation’s affirmation.

The version we sing on Sunday mornings, set to a tune by P.J. Buchan, which was commissioned for the congregation’s 125th anniversary, is a variation based on a covenant that was first published 130 years ago, although its roots in Chicago likely predate that by a few years. The original work was the creation of James Vila Blake, and it declared simply:

“Love is the spirit of this church, and service is its law. This is our great covenant, – to dwell together in peace, to seek the truth in love, and to help one another.” Full stop.

Born in Brooklyn in 1842, Blake was a graduate of Harvard and he served congregations in Haverhill, Massachusetts, Boston, and Quincy, Illinois, before being called as minister of the Third Unitarian Church of Chicago in 1883. After about a decade in the city, he established a preaching station – a satellite congregation, if you will – in the suburban community of Evanston and he served both congregations for about five years. When the Evanston church outgrew Third Unitarian and built its own chapel, Blake headed for the suburbs and completed his fifty-year minister there.

Blake was one of the so-called Unity Men, prairie radicals of their day who might now seem charmingly conventional, but who threatened the theological consensus of Boston Unitarianism. They dominated the Western Unitarian Conference at a time when “Western” pretty much meant anything west of upstate New York. It was arguably the leading edge of Unitarianism’s theological development, inspired in part by the Transcendentalism of New England, and spiritual kin to what was known as the Free Religious Association.

Third Unitarian Church had experienced considerable turmoil during its early years, including an incident in which the sexton was fired because the forgetful minister had misplaced something and blamed the sexton. After an investigation, the congregation reinstated the sexton and sent the minister packing. Upon his arrival, Blake set about the stabilize the congregation, which he succeeded in doing over his fourteen-year tenure. Around the time that he began his work in Evanston, he introduced two covenants he had prepared to guide their affairs – a Covenant of Fellowship and a Covenant of Belief. The latter was more or less just a list of beliefs commonly held by Unitarians at the time – our congregation had one of its own – and it was written in general and poetic terms, used primarily for educational and promotional purposes. It wasn’t really a covenant at all, since nobody was required to hold any of the beliefs expressed in order to belong to the congregation. Yet it helped members when they were chatting with their neighbours over the fence, or explaining themselves to family at Thanksgiving dinners, because it gave them a basis for talking about God, the universe, scripture, and other conventional religious topics from a liberal perspective.

The Covenant of Fellowship, however, was required for membership in the congregation. It was the basis upon which the congregation gathered as a spiritual community. To repeat, the covenant stated:

“Love is the spirit of this church, and service is its law. This is our great covenant, – to dwell together in peace, to seek the truth in love, and to help one another.”

It was uncommonly broad and inclusive. It was scarcely theological or religious, in any conventional understanding, let alone explicitly Christian. By way of comparison, this congregation’s Bond of Union at the time was: “In truth and in the spirit of Jesus of Nazareth, we unite for the service of God and men.” Try singing that next Sunday! Even today, if you were to take the Blake Covenant to the most liberal United Church in this city, you would almost certainly be informed, perhaps with a hint of regret, that it would be an insufficient basis for organizing a congregation in that liberal denomination. But for Unitarians in Chicago 130 years ago, it was enough. And the view spread widely.

In 1893, when the text of the covenant appeared in The Christian Register, the forerunner to The Unitarian Universalist World, it received a mixed reaction. More conservative Unitarians considered it too vague and believed that it fell short of expressing the basis of our faith, while more liberal, humanistic Unitarians welcomed it as a fresh expression of the essentials. Over time, its popularity blossomed and many congregations across the continent, but especially those in the middle and western parts of it, embraced it as a sublime expression of liberal religious values – everything that was needed to build a congregation on.

So why does First Unitarian Universalist Church have a longer statement? Our affirmation echoes the Blake Covenant, but it says more. And it says it a little differently – not only because it’s been set to music. Why is that?

Well, as Universalists and Unitarians came to work more closely together in the early years of the 20th century, and as individual congregations merged – decades before the two denominations did – the Blake Covenant came to the attention of Universalists. But it was considered too humanistic to be embraced, so, inspired by the original work of James Vila Blake, L. Griswold Williams, a Universalist minister in Pennsylvania and Vermont, who served on the commission that produced the first joint hymnbook for Universalists and Unitarians, reworked the covenant in a manner more palatable in his denomination:

“Love is the doctrine of this church;

The quest of truth is its sacrament;

And service is its prayer.

To dwell together in peace;

To seek knowledge in freedom;

To serve mankind in fellowship;

To the end that all souls shall grow into harmony with the Divine, –

Thus do we covenant with each other and with God.”

Only “dwelling together in peace” remained unchanged when Williams created the Universalist variation, but it, too, spread throughout its denomination. However, neither version made their way north to Canada until after the Second World War, and it wasn’t until the 1970s that the Blake Covenant – the simpler version – was used with any frequency as an affirmation in worship. Nowhere in this country does it appear to have been ever used as an actual covenant – that is to say, as the basis of membership in a congregation – but only as an element of worship.

Here in Winnipeg, it’s usage in Sunday services grew in the ’70s and ’80s and, after the church called a minister who was then serving historically Universalist congregations in Pennsylvania, namely Susan Van Dreser, a variation of the Williams Covenant, adapted to reflect the theological sensitivities of this congregation, came to be used increasingly in worship. By the time it became a staple in Sunday services, it was further tweaked and refined. It is essentially a blend of both the Blake and Williams versions, unique – or nearly so – this congregation: 

“Love is the spirit of this church;

The quest for truth its sacrament;

And service is its prayer.

This is our great covenant:

To dwell together in peace;

To seek truth in love;

And to help one another

To the end that all souls shall grow into harmony with Life.”

While listening to Jill Moats’s sermon on time last Sunday, it occurred to me that the decision to drop the definite article from before the word truth – changing the text from the truth to simply truth – marked a shift from quantum theology to the theology of relativity – from the belief that absolute truth exists to a belief that all truth is relative. At the risk of revealing too much, let me say that I’m in the quantum camp on this question, although I wouldn’t presume to tell you what the truth is, since I’m not omniscient, let alone all-wise. If absolute truth exists, none of us have anything more than vague intimations about what it might be, so there’s little point in arguing about it. But I digress. Again.

The more significant change, perhaps, was to have souls grow in harmony with Life, rather than in harmony with the Divine, with all of its theological baggage. This reflects the long-term trend among Unitarians to replace references to God and divine attributes with euphemisms – Life, the Holy, even Love itself – which is nothing new. (It’s easier for a Unitarian to talk about sex than to talk about God.) It has been seen in our tradition for more than a century and half. The hymn Spirit of Life may be the most noteworthy modern illustration of this practice, or even the Interdependent Web of All Existence, both constructs serving to occupy the space once filled by our spiritual ancestors by the word God. And the last line of the Griswold Williams variation was eliminated altogether, removing the deity from the covenant altogether, leaving it a covenant among the people alone.

For the past three decades, this affirmation has been recited Sunday after Sunday. Almost all of you can recite it from memory, with your eyes closed. I’ve watched you do it. And to the extent that we become who we profess to be, if we live with integrity, these words must have some sort of impact on the congregation, both individually and collectively. If not an affirmation, they are at least an aspiration.

If love is the spirit of this church, truly the basis of its existence, its animating reason for being, then what? Well, it seems to me that this is where Erich Fromm’s insights comes into play, and it reveals why the church – especially one that professes to find its essence in love – is, by its very nature, a countercultural institution. Because we do not live in a society that is organized with love at its core. Our legislatures do not place love on the table next to the mace as a symbol of authority. Our economy is not driven by the motive force of love in corporate boardrooms and shareholder meetings. The media, whether the news media or social media, are not overflowing with evidence of love, although the occasional report may slip in at the end of a broadcast, or love might inspire a crowdfunding campaign. Beyond the family, it’s primarily in the non-profit sector, and especially among spiritual communities, that you see human activities organized around the notion of love.

Love is what is left when God has been removed. Or when we imagine this absence. And some may be left to wonder if that makes much of a difference at all, other than eliminating personality, whether fictional or real, from what we profess our devotion to.

At the little church I served for 29 years, up in Arborg, Manitoba, we had a banner at the front of the sanctuary, where the altar or cross would have been in most churches, that read: “God is Love.” On one occasion, when the congregation hosted a regional meeting, a member of one of our sophisticated urban congregations – in fact, a member of this congregation – looked at a member of the Arborg congregation and asked, indelicately, “How can you stand to look at that on Sunday mornings?” The Arborg congregant observed that he was reading it the wrong way. “Read it from the bottom up. It says, Love is God.” And that works for me.

If love is the spirit of this church, then mere production and mere consumption cannot be its purpose. Much of what happens at church may look similar to activities in other places, but there is a depth dimension, grounded in love, that makes similar-looking activities qualitatively different. What we do on Sunday mornings may be entertaining, but they are not an entertainment. We may have educational programs, but they are meant to convey more than just knowledge. We may socialize, but this is not merely a social club. We may have a shop in the foyer, but this is not a store. We may rent the facility to various groups, but we are not operating a convention centre. We may serve refreshments after services, but we are not a café.

Fromm maintained that love was not so much an emotion as it was a decision, an activity, a discipline. And it necessarily involves a community, because love cannot be practiced alone. Love is practiced only in relationship – a web of relationships. It demands genuine concern for people other than ourselves, an ownership of responsibility for their well-being, both spiritually and materially, and respect for their individuality and choices. It is a decision, not a feeling; an activity, not a static state; a discipline, but not a burden. Love is a way of being in the world that measures life’s value by quality over quantity, depth over superficiality, wisdom over whim.

“I believe that love is the main key to open the doors to the ‘growth’ of [humans],” declared Erich Fromm in his Credo. “Love and union with someone or something outside of oneself, union that allows one to put oneself into relationship with others, to feel one with others, without limiting the sense of integrity and independence. Love is a productive orientation for which it is essential that there be present at the same time: concern, responsibility, and respect ... I believe that the experience of love is the most human and humanizing act that it is given to [us] to enjoy ...”

Having recently received the news that former U.S. president Jimmy Carter may be in the last days, perhaps even hours, of his life,* it would be hard to find a clearer example of one who has turned faith to love and modelled what the adherents of a church declaring love to be its spirit might look like. Whatever you may think about his presidency, and whatever quarrels you may have with his policies, Jimmy Carter has been arguably the finest former president in American history. Not a saint, but a model. Love requires effort, not perfection. After his defeat for re-election, he picked himself up and devoted to remainder of his life to humanitarian work – projects driven by love rather than economics.

“I have one life and one chance to make it count for something,” Carter said. “My faith demands that I do whatever I can, wherever I am, whenever I can, for as long as I can with whatever I have to try to make a difference.”

If love is the spirit of this church, and service its law, then whatever else it may mean, it means is that we are called to do whatever we can to live in such a way that, as individuals and as a congregation, to dwell together peacefully and equitably, help to rectify injustice, ameliorate suffering, and serve the needs of our neighbours, so that whenever it is that we have completed life’s journey, we leave this old world a better place.

A sermon delivered at the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Winnipeg.

* Note: Reports of Jimmy Carter’s imminent demise proved to be premature.