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A ritual to widen, deepen UU identity: Love feasts

02.27.08 | 6 Comments

Here’s an idea. UUs should start doing regular love feasts.

“Love feasts”—also called “agape feasts“—are a simple sharing of food and drink as a celebration of community.1 They are an ancient tradition from the Early Church that are sometimes connected to communion, sometimes not.

My own experience of love feasts comes from my college fraternity. I was a member of a houseless Christian service fraternity that celebrated monthly love feasts. They were well attended—and usually interrupted by side splitting laughter.

Here’s how they worked. It was a stripped down version. To celebrate we needed four things.

  1. A room
  2. A large loaf of bread
  3. A cup of water
  4. Matthew 25:31-46, the parable of the sheep and goats2

We’d stand in a circle, and the president would read the passage from Matthew. The water and bread would make their way around the circle. Sometimes we’d each say a word or two about where we were in our lives; other times it would go around in silence.

The key thing was how we received the bread and the water. The person whose turn it was would hold the cup of water. Then the person who had just received would tear off a piece of bread, dip it in the water, and put in their brother’s mouth.

It was very important that it be a large loaf of bread because the pieces we would tear off were usually just a little too big to chew—but big enough to stuff in someone’s mouth.

Love feasts bound us together as a community. Brothers who were no longer dues paying members were a small but steady presence, as were brothers who had left school—as alumni or otherwise. People hungered for the ritual. People came even when they weren’t on speaking terms with another member, and a few times they even helped to heal wounds.

The month to month repetition also provided the ritual backbone to make the fraternity a radically open community. In conservative Oklahoma City, our Christian fraternity grew to welcome gay members and members of other religious traditions. Reading the Matthew passage every time helped too.

How could this flavor of love feasts play out in UU circles, congregational or otherwise?

  • Love feasts can be made to celebrate—and even help to create—actively, radically open community. Breaking bread together at an open table celebrates Unitarian Universalism. A different reading would help here too
  • Love feasts don’t require any particular organizational form. You don’t need a congregation. All you need are a few people, and bread and water. Wherever two or three are gathered.
  • If love feasts became widespread, they would become a ritual that marked continuing commitment to Unitarian Universalism and Unitarian Universalists. People would long for them.
  • Love feasts be an newcomer-friendly ritual for those first exploring Unitarian Universalism.
  • Love feasts could be a great resource—or better—for emergent UU groups.
  1. Sorry to disappoint if you were expecting something saucier. [↩]
  2. The bit about the goats often devolved into speculations about what went on in pledges’ dorm rooms. [↩]

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