"Death of Goodness"

Sometimes the covenant community is challenged, does it mean what it says about seeking right relations among members? How can we limit unacceptable behavior? And what are the consequences if a member violates the covenant of community?

William Ellery Channing wrote wisely about the limits of our freedom-in-community: "No (one) is excommunicated from our church save by the death of goodness in (their) own heart."

Sometimes religious liberals read Channing as saying that in a Unitarian Universalist church that every member can do anything they want and remain a member. This is the idea that freedom is a license for the individual to what they will against the community. Some religious liberals hesitate to recognize that indeed "goodness in the heart" can be as experienced as dead. But such reasoning is false optimism based on denial, not a grounded and genuine religious optimism based on the potential of transformation. Love cannot become incarnate among a collectiion of people that has no mutual and shared expectations, such a group is a crowd, not a community.

The liberal church does not set up creedal tests, nor do we require saintly behavior of its members, but we do ask that members respect other members of the community, and contribute to the work of building community. When a member organizes against other members of the congregation, and slanders the leading members of the congregation because they do not get their way, they have chosen to become antagonists to that congregation and the congregation has the responsibility to ask that member to cease and desist from their antagonism. If they refuse to cease their disruptive behavior, then that person must be removed from membership. This is essential for the life of the covenant community, and it is usually to the good of the antagonist as well. They are more likely to overcome their antagonistic behavior, when given a break from the emotions of the conflicted situation.

Is the "death of goodness in the heart" absolute? No, "goodness" is matter of behavior and it is manifestly relational. A person might be considered "good" in a dozen other contexts, but the judgement whether "goodness in the heart" necessary for a congregation's own right relationships can only be determined by that particular community. The congregation in our polity is responsible for determining its own membership. It is not for individuals to declare their "goodness" and then carry out disruption in a congregation.