Beacon’s Proposed Congregational Covenant
Love guides this congregation. Love calls us daily to acts of liberation grounded in antiracism. We affirm that we live in the complexity of intersectionality and that building healthy and loving relationships is a spiritual practice, requiring both inward and outward focus. Thus, we covenant to listen deeply, speak compassionately, express gratitude, and embrace our unique diversity. We endeavor to communicate honestly and with compassion, particularly when we are in conflict. When we hurt one another, we will try to make amends, forgive and reconnect with an intent to repair, change and grow. Our purpose is to be radically inclusive, feed the human spirit and heal the world. In celebration of the common purpose that unites us and with the aspiration of Beloved Community before us, we will do our best to abide by this covenant.
Considering the proposed Covenant
We invite you to read the proposed Congregational Covenant with curiosity and wonder. We invite you to consider the substantive promises the covenant contains, both in the context of today’s struggles, and as we focus our sights on manifesting an increasingly just and healthy future. How will this covenant stretch and transform us?
We ask you to consider whether these covenantal commitments will make Beacon a community that truly is radically inclusive, that will propel us into a process of both inner and outer transformation, that is strong and daring enough to aspire to heal the world.
As you take in the covenant proposed, we invite you to reflect on these questions:
o What words or phrases inspire you to lean into our aspirations?o What dimensions challenge you personally as you imagine living these promises?o What is missing from this promise that would more powerfully bring our aspirations into reality? (our mission, our vision, our adherence to our UU principles)
Our Process
After a yearlong conversation process around covenant, our Task Force began speaking last summer with fellow UU congregations about their covenants. In the process, we discovered one that resonated deeply with us because we heard within it the very commitments spoken at Beacon.
Our Task Force edited the covenant, weaving in the core of Beacon’s voices and we have presented it to groups within Beacon. Thus far, the Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) group and the Board of Trustees have reviewed and affirmed the covenant.
A word about Beacon’s Covenant and antiracism:
The covenant presented here is not simply words on a page. Nor is it a place where we have arrived as a people. The covenant is a manifestation of the process that created it and represents our recently-affirmed commitment to living into promises grounded in antiracism. We are called to learn and embody the terminology that’s so important to fulfilling our mission. Although some of the phrases may be unfamiliar to you, visitors would see the covenant as evidence that Beacon truly aspires to be radically inclusive.
As you know, Beacon has adopted the 8th principle, and we understand the work of the Covenant as embodying not only our existing principles and our mission, but as an important step in living into the 8th Principle. (See glossary below.) The heightened and too-frequent suffering in our world (outside and within our walls) calls us to an ever more loving, more tenacious and resilient commitment to the Beacon we envision, the Beacon we must be.
What does that mean?
In adopting the 8th Principle we have pledged that one of our denomination’s and our congregation’s central commitments is to be an antiracist community. That pledge calls us not only to say the right words but to do things in new ways including the following:
● Center non-dominant voices: the covenant has prioritized or “centered” voices of people in less advantaged segments of society, and it reflects their needs
● Recognize and suspend privilege: those most advantaged (white people, males, financially advantaged, etc) are accustomed to having the “final say” or making their mark, we are asked to accept that it may be at the expense of others.
● Acknowledge that comfort is a privilege: we are asked to willingly move to the edge of our comfort zone, and accept there are needs more important than being comfortable with every word, and that comfort sometimes means protecting a status quo that is harming others
Glossary of Terms
As we intentionally choose to live out our stated commitments: anti-racism, radical inclusion, and healing the world, this covenant calls us into new and unfamiliar areas of understanding. To insure shared understanding of important elements of the covenant, we share this glossary.
Covenant: Agreements of how to be in relationship with each other, the Earth and self. Unlike in a contract, when a covenant is broken by either party, the expectation is that the other party continues to fulfill their commitments.
8th Principle: “We, the member congregations of the Unitarian Universalist Association, covenant to affirm and promote: journeying toward spiritual wholeness by working to build a diverse multicultural Beloved Community by our actions that accountably dismantle racism and other oppressions in ourselves and our institutions.”
Acts of Liberation: Grounded in liberation theology where liberation is always communal, rather than individual; critical thinking or behaviors that seek to dismantle oppression within ourselves, the congregation and in the world.
Beloved Community: Conceptualized by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King to be an attainable goal of justice, equity and global peace arising from the collective good and organizing. In Beloved Community, all may share in the wealth of the earth without abuse, harm or exploitation. See more information at https://thekingcenter.org/king-philosophy/
Antiracism: The quality of actively dismantling structural and institutional racism and eradicating any racial inequity within a system.
Intersectionality: “A lens, a prism, for seeing the way in which various forms of inequality often operate together and exacerbate each other. We tend to talk about race inequality as separate from inequality based on gender, class, sexuality or immigrant status. What’s often missing is how some people are subject to all of these, and the experience is not just the sum of its parts.” ~Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, in “She Coined the Term ‘Intersectionality’ Over 30 Years Ago. Here’s What It Means to Her Today” by Katy Steinmetz, Time
Three Definitions are taken from Widening the Circle of Concern: Report of the UUA Commission on Institutional Change, June 2020.