Creed or Covenant
Sermon: September 6, 2026 . Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of San Dieguito
Creed versus covenant. At the beginning of each of our services, we say the words, “What binds us together as a faith community is not a creed but the power and sacredness of a covenant based on unconditional love.” How did we get here to this place where we value covenant over creed? It might seem like an obvious answer. We don’t want to be told what to believe in or where authority should lie. Instead, we want to be in community with others who share our values.
So let’s begin with the difference between values and creed. A creed is any formal statement or system of core beliefs, values, or convictions. Values are right there in the definition. So when we talk about our principles, we can say that we believe in the interdependence of life, or we believe in the worth and dignity of every person. The word creed definitely applies to our set of principles and values, but we shy away from it because it infers religious connotations. But aren’t we religious? The word religious itself comes from the latin Relegere, meaning "to re-read," "go over again," or "consider carefully.” I would like to think that we are a body of careful considerers who act out our values religiously, with strict regularity and care. Our issue with the word religion only comes in when we apply the notion that we should agree on a singular concept of the divine, which we don’t, but that’s not necessary to be religious. So, I would argue that our principles, our shared values, are a sort of a creed. They are our statements of faith, our shared beliefs, and the principles through which we attempt to live out our actions. The word doctrine, which is associated with the “doctors” or religious scholars of the past, is also defined as a set of teachings that people follow, not unlike our principles and values that we teach in our RE classes every Sunday.
So, the words creed and doctrine themselves aren’t really a bad fit for our faith, they just carry such charged energy from other faith groups that we avoid them in an attempt to distance ourselves from the unwanted energy of the white supremacist heteropatriarchy we wish to leave behind.
UU Minister Rev. Meredith Garmon says “The difference between creed and principle is this: Principles are general and meant to be inclusive. Creeds are meant to be exclusive. Our principles are sufficient as a basis of what a religious community must hold in common. We don’t need added-on exclusivist doctrine.” At face value this feels right, but I also offer the perspective that every community is exclusivist to a certain degree, even us. In fact, although we don’t tell people that they have to believe in a specific religious doctrine to belong here, in the same breath we say that they need to share the same values, and we have created a pact with each other that we must agree to in order to stay in right relationship with each other. And that pact is our covenant.
The word covenant is from the French word convenir, which means to suit, to be appropriate. So a covenant is a pact made between two parties that suits each other, a pact in which the parties work toward a shared goal. Although covenant may seem like a more recent religious concept than creed, it has been in existence in the Judeo-Christian world since the very beginning. In the Hebrew Bible, God made covenants with Adam, Noah, Abraham, Palestine, Moses, and David, and each time those were unsuccessful, according to God. So, he sent Jesus and made a covenant with all of mankind in the New Testament. The Bible Project says that “Jesus Is the Covenantal Climax” because he “perfectly succeeded at every point where humanity failed. He is the guarantor and mediator of the new and better covenant with God. Now people from every nation, tribe, and tongue who trust Jesus can become a part of God’s covenant family.” So participating in the new Christian covenant depends on one’s belief in a creed, namely in the belief that Jesus was the son of God. John Fugelsang, author of “Separation of Church and Hate: A Sane Person's Guide to Taking Back the Bible from Fundamentalists, Fascists, and Flock-Fleecing Frauds” says “The New Covenant established by Jesus marks a massive shift from the religious law and customs Jesus was raised with, to a different kind of faith-based user experience. It’s Jesus’s software update, from Law 1.0 to Love 1.0. Calling oneself “Christian” is to accept the new terms and conditions.”
The difference between our covenant and that of Christianity is that our covenant is with each other and not with a divine entity. Does that make our covenant easier or more difficult to uphold? And how does our Covenant relate to believing in our principles? Is it enough for one to participate in our Covenant even if they struggle with one of our principles? We’re getting ourselves into a chicken and egg situation here. Creed or covenant? Covenant or creed?
Creed tells us what we believe in, what we teach. Covenant tells us how we act. Although we affirm that what is important to us is our actions with each other and how we treat those in and outside of our community, I find that over and over again, visitors to our fellowship tell me that they are seeking a place where people believe the same things they do, where there are like-minded individuals who “believe” in our shared principles. To me, this speaks to creed more than to covenant. I think most people think that if we share beliefs (not about the divine, but about how we treat each other), shared actions will follow, even when it is often much harder to steer our actions than to acknowledge our beliefs. And that is our challenge.
Do you believe in the divine right of worth and dignity for each person? Yes. What does that look like to you? How does that differ from the person you’re sitting next to?
Do you believe in the goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all? Yes. How can we get there? How does that path differ from that of the person sitting next to you?
Our covenant doesn’t tell us how to do that. It only tells us how to act with each other as we attempt to do it. It tells us that our spirit is love, that our sacrament is the quest for truth, that our prayer is service. We aim to be peaceful with each other, to maintain freedom of thought, and to help each other. That pact can be done whether we believe in God or not, or whether we participate in specific spiritual practices or rituals or not. Our freedom of thought and belief lies pretty strictly in the realm of the divine, but not in the realm of humanity. I think it’s safe to say we don’t have a divine creed, but do have a humanist one, which we teach and use as a guide for our actions, while in covenant with each other.
UU minister Rev. John Buehrens says “Hope is key to every covenant. As I have told my congregation, which takes pride in a heritage of being noncreedal, our forbearers were wise in putting aside creedal questions – “What do we all believe in common? What ancient formulae of faith are we willing to confess together?” in favor of the more covenantal questions: “What spiritual hopes do we share? What shall we promise to one another as we try to live together toward our hopes?” But sometimes I worry that in taking pride in their non-creedal freedom they can easily forget the deep responsibility that their freedom – if it is truly covenantal freedom – necessarily entails.”
I think it’s time to reassess whether we are a creedal religion or not. Do our values and principles define us? If so, do we insist that they are shared among those in our communities? Or is it enough to aspire to them and follow our shared covenant? We have already decided that sharing a belief in the divine isn’t important to us, but what about sharing our principles and values, our beliefs in humanity? Isn’t this what makes us UU’s and what makes what we are gathered here today to do a religious practice? Why are we scared to embrace the reality that we do want to be among people who share our beliefs, our hopes and dreams, that we gather to be in sacred community for a reason, that there is a part of us that yearns for a religion to believe in, and to know that there are others who believe the same, but who will also challenge us to put those beliefs into action so that we can work toward our shared goal of a better world. This is what religious community offers.
You may disagree with my thoughts on using the word creed. And that’s okay. This is a place where we can disagree on what language empowers each of us to act out our shared values. But who we are and how we define ourselves matters. It not only offers us the opportunity to self-reflect, but also helps others understand what we do believe, what we are fighting for. So the next time someone asks you, “What do UU’s believe?” perhaps the answer is not, “Anything they want”, but instead something like this:
"We believe in the right to individual freedom of spiritual thought coupled with the humanistic principles of value, dignity, potential, and agency for all people."
Now, that’s a creed I could agree with.
OTHER READINGS FOR REFLECTION:
“Civilization’s history tends to be written in terms of human discoveries and inventions, wars, artistic creations, laws, forms of government, customs, the cultivation of the land. . . . At the heart of this history, however, lies a sometimes hidden narrative of promises, pledges, oaths, compacts, committed beliefs, and projected visions. At the heart of any individual’s story, too, lies the tale of her or his commitments.”
Rev. Susan Frederick-Gray: “We sometimes wrongly say it is the absence of creed that is most important to who we are [as Unitarian Universalists]. This is wrong. Any one of us could practice religious freedom at home on Sunday mornings. We could practice religious freedom all day long, every day, and never come into community. It is covenant that brings us out of isolation, covenant that brings us out of selfish concerns, out of individualism, to join ourselves to something greater, to become a part of a community that is working to practice love, to dwell together in peace, to seek knowledge and wisdom together, to find better ways to live our lives and live in the world.”
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