Liturgists and People Who Know What They Are Talking About have worked very hard to persuade people that we should be trying dissuade people from talking about Christenings and instead talk about the sacrament of baptism. Today the Church of England appears to have let the cat out of the bag with a post that seems to suggest that no-one, least of all anyone in the Church of England’s press team has been paying the blindest bit of notice.
The post, Top 10 facts about Christenings is being comprehensively panned and rubbished on twitter by friends I know in the Church of England.
The post itself reminds me of a conversation that I had only yesterday with an American friend when I realised that what we think about baptism differs radically in different parts of the world. Like marriage, we believe baptism to be a universal thing commonly understood. And then you look at the formularies for the services or chat to someone about it and you realise that we are not always talking about the same thing.
During my trip to North America last year, I was more concious than ever that the churches over there have bought into a baptismal theology that we just don’t talk about. It is based around something called the baptismal covenant – a little catechism that is used at baptisms.
Now, we use the words here too. People will recognise them as being part of the service of baptism.
Here’s one form of it:
Do you believe in God the Creator, who made the world?
I believe.
Do you believe in God the Saviour, who redeemed humanity?
I believe.
Do you believe in God the Sanctifier, who gives life to God’s people?
I believe.
This is the faith of the Church.
This is our faith. We believe in one God, Creator, Saviour and Sanctifier.
AmenNN., as those who will love and care for N., will you continue in the Apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and in the prayers?
With the help of God, I will
Will you proclaim the good news by word and deed, serving Christ in all people?
With the help of God, I will.
Will you work for justice and peace, honouring God in all Creation?
With the help of God, I will.This is the task of the Church.
This is our task: to live and work for the kingdom of God.
Now the point is, this isn’t called The Baptismal Covenant in Scotland. And in England, so far as I can get my head around the liturgy, it is entirely optional and even then only for those who have been baptised who can answer for themselves, not for babies.
Yet, my friends in the US and Canada speak about the Baptismal Covenant as though it is universally understood, always used at baptisms and as though it justifies all kinds of things.
For a lot of people over there, the questions about gay relationships, ordaining women as bishops and priests and all kinds of other issues about justice are simply answered with a shrug of the shoulders and “well, we need to do these things because of the baptismal covenant”.
I don’t think that I do well in explaining to friends from across the pond that though we may (or indeed may not) use the same words at baptisms, we don’t generally carry those ideas through into thinking that they are slam dunk answers to difficult questions that arise in other areas of church life. Indeed, they look at me as though I am bonkers. I don’t know anyone in the UK who would seriously argue in public that same-sex marriage or the ordination of women are obviously things that we should do because of anything to do with baptism yet that association is commonplace in other parts of the Anglican Communion.
I may be bonkers, of course. But I think I’m right to say that the north American churches believe that there is something going on at baptism that I think most Christians in the UK Anglican churches and indeed most Christians in all of the rest of Christendom through all the ages of the church would be bewildered and puzzled by.
I’m puzzled by it too. Though there is nothing in the Baptismal Covenant that I disagree with, it isn’t a set of promises that were either made on my behalf as a child nor was I asked to assert any of it when I was baptised.
When you travel, you discover that some things are universal. When you travel well, you realise that they are not the things that you expected to be universal.
Thoughts?
You might find it interesting to see that it isn’t only Episcopalians here in the US that have use some variation of the baptismal covenant. Here is a link to the ELCA (Lutherans) (http://www.elca.org/Growing-In-Faith/Discipleship/Faith-Practices/Living-Our-Baptismal-Covenant.aspx) to a Methodist service (http://www.kintera.org/atf/cf/%7B3482e846-598f-460a-b9a7-386734470eda%7D/BAPTISMAL-RITUAL-REVISED.PDF) and to a Presbyterian use (http://www.kintera.org/atf/cf/%7B3482e846-598f-460a-b9a7-386734470eda%7D/BAPTISMAL-RITUAL-REVISED.PDF)
It seems that not just Episcopalians but also most mainline Protestant denominations here are thinking like this. To be honest I am rather surprised to hear you claim that this is something outside of mainline thinking. Does this not go back to Aquinas? Also, is it possible that the question asked before baptism in the 1662 (“Wilt thou obediently keep God’s holy will and commandments, and walk in the same all the days of thy life?”) is pretty much in the same line of thinking?
It is emphasis that is out of kilter, Denis. I think it is stretching a point to say that 1662 is really similar to the Baptismal Covenant.
As I keep trying to say, I’m not saying that it is unreasonable to hope that someone who has been baptised might live well. What is odd, very odd indeed, is to assert that because of the Baptismal Covenant, we therefore must ordain women, must ordained partnered gay people or must avert environmental disaster. We should be doing those things anyway. Ordaining women, ordaining partnered gay people and saving the planet are all wonderful things. They are moral things. The church should do these things. What just makes no sense is the argument that comes shouted out almost beligerantly from some quarters that we should do these things because of the Baptismal Covenant.
That’s a novelty and I struggle to see that it was the business that Aquinas was in. All I’m trying to do is explain to people formed within those ideas that others just won’t see that as a way of settling those arguements. That’s because the idea of a Baptismal Covenant just isn’t that important to a lot of people and in some churches simply isn’t used at baptism.
No Kelvin, I’m beginning to suspect that the novelty here is that you have retained much of your formation in the Salvation Army, a religious organization that claims to be Christian, but doesn’t even practice baptism or communion.
Well, that is certainly a factor in my faith journey. My own journey to the faith I have now was a flight towards the sacraments. That was what I was looking for. I was baptised, I remember it! And I became a communicant. (Not in that order). And I became an Episcopalian.
But making it personal won’t alter the fact that a lot of Christians and a lot of Anglicans will be bemused by the idea that we should ordain women, ordain gay people in relationships and save the planet because of a Covenant that they’ve not heard of, not considered much, may not hear used at baptisms and so on.
It is that argument that I still say is novel. That the church should do those things because of the Baptismal Covenant is not an argument that will make sense to a lot a people. All I’m doing is trying to explain why.
I have made it personal, because I think that most of what you espouse here is you, not other Anglicans or Christians in general. I don’t think that Desmond Tutu wrote the forward to the book We Were Baptized Too, because it was a new concept to him and the Anglicans in South Africa.
I visit a number of Anglican blogs on a daily basis from all over the globe and you are the first to express that this concept is novel and never heard of. In my experience it connects with folks the world over.
“a lot of Anglicans will be bemused by the idea that we should ordain women, ordain gay people in relationships and save the planet because of a Covenant that they’ve not heard of, not considered much, may not hear used at baptisms and so on.”
Well the argument that many of us are making, at least here in the US, and I firmly believe that we are right about this, is that we should ordain women, ordain gay people in relationships and save the planet because of the demands and core truths of the faith. If they sign on to the faith than these things apply. If they don’t think that they do then they are wrong. Not mistaken but wrong. Period / full stop. Saying “because of the Baptismal Covenant” means simply “because you signed up for this.” And “this” means both Christianity in general and the things that have always been part of it but not recognized because of human error and failure. If other Anglicans don’t get that then our duty is to help them get it. Great Commission and such.
Well we are right in the middle of the old exegesis / eisegesis argument here. Are we reading this out of the faith or into it? I guess I have to just assert that asking, “Wilt thou obediently keep God’s holy will and commandments, and walk in the same all the days of thy life?” implies marriage equality and opening ordination to women, along with caring for the environment and supporting justice (“What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?”) If you don’t find these things embedded within the idea of the Kingdom of God then there is no debating, really. But if these things are contained within ‘following the commandments and walking in the same’ then being more explicit with the promises made (both at baptism and at services such as the Great Vigil) and pointing to the Baptismal Covenant as reason and warrant is just spelling out the obvious.
Simply put, if the promises made in the Baptismal Covenant are some new add-on and not part and parcel of Christianity, if “real” and “pure” Christianity doesn’t have within it the idea of justice and mercy and all that this contains, if the promises made at Baptism to follow God don’t entail these things, then so much the worse for Christianity and in that case it isn’t worth a damn, isn’t worth saving, and isn’t worth my time.
I think Dennis and Dah-veed, you are talking cross purposes with Kelvin.
The question is not so much whether it is reasonable to speak of a Baptismal Covenant and to draw certain theological and ecclesiological implications from that.
The question is whether your understanding of it is one that is shared by Anglicans all over the world and understood without further explanation.
And there Kelvin is undoubtedly right. In the whole 20 odd years since women have been priests and we have been discussing women bishops no-one has used Baptism as an argument in favour. It’s a line of thinking that is just not part of our theological conversation.
And no-one has ever referred to Baptism when we discussed whether Jeffrey John or any other gay partnered priest should be allowed to become bishop.
That’s not to say those arguments could not be made on the basis you’re making them.
But it is to say that we just don’t do it.
So when Kelvin says that North Americans assume that their theological conversation is automatically understood everywhere but that this assumption is not correct, he’s merely stating a fact.
Yes!
Oh I understand that well enough.
Although I am not completely convinced that no one in the U.K. sees that there is a direct connection between baptism and these issues. My issue here is the claim that our position (found across so many denominations including as Kelvin pointed out the current Roman catechism) is somehow novel. It just isn’t. We may use new terms like “Baptismal Covenant” instead of calling it simply one’s Christian obligation, but the tie between baptism and the obligations of the faith on the individual and the community of believers go right through the NT. Not seeing it may be a cultural blinders issue in parts of the U.K. but the idea is not a new thing.
Here is an interesting point to me: Brits have all sorts of funny assumptions about Americans in general with sometimes no relationship to reality in those assumption. One of those is that all Americans are hyper individualists with no interest in the community. Yet here we are with Americans (and plenty of others throughout the faith worldwide) saying that baptism is ultimately about the community and we have a voice from that side saying “oh no, it is an entirely individualistic thing with no obligations or implications whatsoever.” Odd, eh?
Is the problems that Christianity has throughout the U.K. with equality and justice due perhaps to some sort of flawed understanding of the demands on Christians because of baptism? If it is really true that no one has tied justice and community obligations to baptism in the U.K. then we have some hint to part of the problem. There may be cultural blinders at play. Every culture has then.
sorry so many typing errors above. I typed that out on my phone and it is hard to edit on a little touch screen.
Once again, I don’t really have a problem with liturgies making the presumption that there is a hope around at baptism that the baptised person will behave nicely.
My point remains that Anglicans from North America cannot be surprised when other people don’t understand them when they answer questions about the ordination of women and of people in gay relationships by referring to a Baptismal Covenant that those other Anglicans won’t recognise and will not understand.
The fact is that though I guess just about everyone involved in church would want to think that baptized people ought to be nice. It does not follow from that notion that Christians throughout the world and throughout history therefore think it is fundamentally right to ordain women and bless gay relationships. They may think those things to be right or wrong for all kinds of reasons. The primary reasons that they have for doing so in many cases will have nothing to do with baptism.
All I can say, Dennis, is when the last lot of “half arsed Baptism” posts swept my Facebook it all came from America and none of my British friends really knew what it meant.
I don’t know if you followed any of our women priests debates or gay priest debates, or read any of the countless papers and discussion documents produced in their support.
They do not mention Baptism.
They mention justice as a core requirement of Christian faith but they do not use the Baptism as a shorthand for that.
“half-assed”, Erika. They use the phrase “half-assed baptism” as though it answers questions about the ordination of women or over gay issues. That’s the phrase folk over here don’t understand.
Thanks, Kelvin – says a lot that I didn’t even know how to spell the phrase properly!
half-arsed – half-assed, it means the same doesn’t it, just the local colloquialisms.
It comes from this sermon at the Integrity Eucharist during the TEC General Convention in Atlanta, GA, USA in 2009 by the Rt Revd Barbara Harris, the first woman consecrated as a bishop in TEC.
“…More importantly, if indeed the church honestly believes gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender folk should not be bishops, then the church should not ordain them to the sacred order of deacons. For certainly, if one is deemed fit to be ordained a transitional deacon, then one should be deemed eligible to move into the sacred order of priests and to be elected and consecrated to the episcopate. If you don’t want GLBT folks as bishops, don’t ordain them as deacons. Better yet, be honest and say, “We don’t want you, you don’t belong here,” and don’t bestow upon them the sacrament of Baptism to begin with.
How can you initiate someone and then treat them like they’re half-assed baptized?…”
http://library.episcopalchurch.org/sites/default/files/integrity_eucharist_09_sermon.pdf
PS – Kelvin, it was nice when we had a Preview button to see our post before committing to it.
In Australia we use the liturgy you describe. I can’t recall the word ‘christening’ being used by the Church in decades.
I’m grateful to another American friend who works in a seminary over there who said this to me on facebook:
He is absolutely right. We don’t have that question. That is precisely why, as Erika acknowledges above, the arguments in favour of the ordination of women and partnered gay folk don’t in this part of the church depend on the Baptismal Covenant. No-one would ever say “We must ordain women because of the covenant we’ve all signed up for in baptism”. The reason they wouldn’t make that argument is that we don’t sign up for that at baptism here. That seems to me to be a simple argument that is difficult to refute.
And yet…
All anyone needs to do to prove me wrong is produce the texts that have a line like that from baptismal liturgies in Scotland, England and elsewhere. Show me where that line is in pre 1979 liturgies (the 1928 book, for example) in American Anglicanism and show me examples of people using it pre 1979 to argue for women’s ordination and justice for gay people and yes, I’ll agree with you and say, you know what, I was wrong, this wasn’t a theological novelty after all.
Alternatively, I’ll happily admit I’m wrong if someone can show me how the Baptismal Covenant has led the Roman Catholic Church or the Orthodox Church (whose baptism we share and recognise) to so enthusiastically ordain women or bless gay couples.
Show me either of those things and I back down straight away.
Much of this thread has been a dialogue between two Anglicans from the other side of the Atlantic and Kelvin in Scotland. As an active British Anglican, I would like to support Kelvin and Erika’s position. The notion of a Baptismal Covenant as set out by Dennis and Bro Dah•veed is not only unknown to me but alien to me. As Erika says: ‘It’s a line of thinking that is just not part of our theological conversation.’ There is simply a difference between two Anglican traditions.
Daniel
Yes, I would see baptism not as covenant, but as gift. As grace, if you like. On the one side, we acknowledge we are willing to respond to the gift, and on the other, we are swept up into something immeasurably larger than we are. We begin as creatures of death, but that death is transformed by water into life, and we respond with joy. Our part is to acknowledge that this new life is a much bigger thing than out old life. But acknowledgement is not covenant. The only covenant I consider myself signed into is the new one, and then, only because Somebody Else did the signing in. In as far as I am in Christ, I am in His covenant. But of a baptismal covenant I know nothing. I have worked most of my life for gender equality, for social justice, for the right of gay people to be recognised and have their relationships recognised as absolutely equal to straight ones, but I do not think of that when I think of baptism.
I’m still trying to get my mind around exactly what’s being argued here. I agree with a number of points I think Kelvin is making:
– that the Baptismal Covenant is not something that’s intelligible to all Christians everywhere and is therefore one source of Anglicans on either side of the Atlantic talking past each other.
– that baptism doesn’t make Christians morally superior to others.
– that we should honor others not because of baptism, but because it is the right thing to do.
The things I don’t quite understand are:
– I get the sense (and please correct me if I’m wrong!) that Kelvin would take issue with the statement “baptism constitutes the church” – or something like that. That’s fine. However, I think it would be a stretch to say that it would be unrecognizable to most Christians. The document “Baptism, Eucharist, and Ministry” holds this position throughout, and that’s hardly a North American document. Perhaps the reasons such understanding don’t show up in earlier catechisms of the Roman Catholic Church is because they were produced before the end of Christendom, or at least before the end of Christendom was widely recognized or acknowledged. If everyone in the west is, more or less, a Christian, there wouldn’t be much need to talk about what constitutes the church.
– I don’t think that agreeing with a statement like the one above says anything about your opinion about baptism, communion, and the ordering of these sacraments. For instance, one can be supportive of communion without baptism and still be interested in moving people to the font. In fact, most if not all proponents of communing the unbaptized hold that position.
Perhaps the things I don’t understand are positions not actually being advocated. Please let me know if I’m misreading or reading into what’s being said.
And please excuse my horrible grammar. Coffee is still working its way through my system.
I’d need to think about that for a while. However, my gut reaction is that for me, Eucharist is what constitutes the church.
Also that I believe (as the Roman Catholic Church believes) that the Eucharist is a sacrament of initiation.
I think I mostly agree with both of those statements.
I think it’s possible to see both Baptism and Eucharist as constituting the church because I’d agree with the Roman Catholic position that holds Baptism, Confirmation, and Eucharist as the rites of initiation. The ’79 BCP made a valiant (though not completely successful) attempt at putting all three back together.
But Baptism is more universal, the Eucharist more church specific. Roman Catholics recognise our baptism and that of other Protestant churches but they do not admit us to Catholic Eucharists. It’s a more selective membership badge.
I think the key is that, while we generally understand the Baptism is how a person becomes a member of the Christian community, that says nothing about how that community should be structured.
So the idea that Baptism says anything about women’s ordination or gay priests is very alien to us.
As that “other American friend who works at a seminary” and who posted the additional comment on Kelvin’s facebook page, let me add my two cents to the blog thread. First, as I understand it, the 1979 Baptismal Covenant IS an innovation or novelty, at least in regard to the line about respecting the dignity of every human being. Gladly subject to correction, but I don’t think that any Anglican baptismal liturgy made that explicit affirmation prior to the ’79 BCP, but really that doesn’t matter. The point is, no matter when or where it came from, it’s in there now, and has deeply shaped the ecclesiology of the Episcopal Church (USA) for the last few decades. Whatever we had before, we now have a baptismal ecclesiology with a strong bent toward explicit peace and justice advocacy. Hence the discussion above with its concomitant transatlantic incomprehensions. To respect the dignity of every human being means in part to listen to and receive their own sense of what it means to be who they are, and not to tell them who “we” think they are or should be. “They” are “we”. Second, the American BCP understands baptism as the initiation rite and the Eucharist as the completion and subsequent reaffirmation of baptism. So, according to the American BCP, baptism constitutes the church as the Body of Christ and to receive the Eucharist (the body and blood of Christ) is to participate in the community created by baptism. That’s my understanding, at any rate.
Thanks Rob. Yes – I agree.
I also think that the innovation of adding the line about respecting the dignity of every human being has been a hugely successful example of liturgical formation.
Were I in charge of writing a new baptism rite, I might want to try to include it.
However there probably isn’t the scope for doing that to baptism here now. More chance of slipping it into services of induction for the priest and people to say as they talk about what their common vocation is going to be.
I’m not opposed to it. (As I keep saying again and again). But it is a novelty and part of the reason that the American church found itself so isolated was the the arguments that it made over Gene Robinson made sense to so many US Episcopalians – perfect sense in fact, but did not necessarily make sense to people outside that Baptismal Covenant mentality.
I apologize Kelvin, you sent me scurrying back to my library and I had never noticed that in both the 1979 US prayer BCP and in the Canadian Book of Alternative Services that the set of questions just prior to the sacrament to which you refer, are indeed called the Baptismal Covenant.
But I have a rather complete library and I found this in the Baptismal Service of the CoE’s Common Worship, it is called the Commission;
To the newly baptized who are able to answer for themselves, a minister may say
Will you continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers?
With the help of God, I will.
Will you persevere in resisting evil,
and, whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?
With the help of God, I will.
Will you seek and serve Christ in all people, loving your neighbour as yourself?
With the help of God, I will.
Will you acknowledge Christ’s authority over human society, by prayer for the world and its leaders, by defending the weak, and by seeking peace and justice? With the help of God, I will.
May Christ dwell in your heart(s) through faith, that you may be rooted and grounded in love and bring forth the fruit of the Spirit.
Amen.
I would hope that Christians in the CoE are being formed in this service and that these concepts would not be a novelty to them in the near future!
Yes – that’s right. Note that it is not used in the C of E for most baptisms as the rubrics indicate it isn’t used when a baby is baptised.
Of course, some of us in the U.S. live in the Baptismal Covenant Red Herrring Dioceses. That is, where I receive the Eucharist each week we are pretty much Baptismal Covenant competent, but, for example, if one of my children happened to be gay and felt called to the diaconate or priesthood, my parish/diocese could not support them in that call.
So seems in Scotland you would get there without the Baptismal Covenant, but here down the road from the Pick’in Parlor we don’t seem to get there with it.
Thanks Melissa for reminding us that the Baptismal Covenant has not led the US church to a universal practice around how to recognize and welcome LGBT people.
Incidentally, the Pickin’ Parlor was without doubt one of the highlights of my sabbatical.
Perhaps it is a good time to break for a song.
Here’s the Sims family (whom I did not hear in person) at the Pickin’ Parlour itself:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJxcOgwd8nw
I thinksome of this comes from redeeming “humanity” not jsut masculinity. That word was not included by accident.