Rector’s Reflections
Wednesday 15th January 2025
Baptism in Today’s Church: Time for a Change?
In yesterday’s reflections, I outlined the traditional understanding of the role of baptism within the life and practice of the Church of England, as it has been generally understood over the last couple of centuries.
Today I wish to consider the extent to which the traditional understanding of the role of baptism remains relevant today.
To begin with, a significantly smaller proportion of children are being baptised as babies. The days have long since passed when it was the normal thing for parents to bring their babies to church for a baptism. Why is this? In part it reflects the fact that congregations are getting smaller. But there is also a change in mindset. On more than one occasion, I have heard parents saying that they are waiting until their child is older, so that the child is then in a position to make a decision for themselves. One can understand this approach, although one can also ask how a child will be able to make a meaningful decision about getting baptised if they have never had the opportunity to experience life within a church congregation. However, it is certainly true that some older children do indeed decide to get baptized, and they make the decision for themselves.
This leads onto the second major change. In the old days, infant baptism was brought to completion and some would say justified by the sacrament of confirmation, usually administered when the child was becoming a teenager. Confirmation would usually be preceded by a series of classes, and the rite of Confirmation itself provided the candidate with an opportunity to affirm for themselves what was promised on their behalf by their parents and godparents when they baptized as infants. However, confirmation is now becoming something of a rarity. It still seems to survive among some private schools which have a church ethos or foundation, but it is no longer a standard feature of the life of a typical Church of England parish. Why is this? In part it reflects the fact that confirmation is traditionally associated with teenagers, and the number of teenagers taking an active part in church life is getting smaller. It also reflects the fact that some would argue that baptism is sufficient for a child to take a full role in the life of the church, and so confirmation is unnecessary – it is nothing more than the icing on the cake. For example, a church may decide to allow baptized but unconfirmed children to take Communion.
A third factor is the withering of the “sacramental system”. It is rare for anyone nowadays, outside a High Church context, to talk about the “sacraments” or the “sacramental system”. Traditionally, Christians were considered to participate in the life of Christ through the sacraments of the Church. This is the traditional Catholic doctrine. Nowadays, the emphasis is on a more Evangelical approach: we participate in the life of Christ through a personal relationship with Jesus expressed through worship, prayer and personal belief. Of course there is considerable overlap between the Catholic approach and the Evangelical approach, and they are not mutually incompatible. However, the Catholic approach draws attention to the importance of “the Church”, and this has become increasingly irrelevant to the life and practice of today’s Church of England. Basically, the idea of “the Church” has become irrelevant to most of the Church of England, and so the idea that baptism is important because it is the designated mode of entry into “the Church” is equally irrelevant.
Why is the “sacramental system” withering away? Again, there is a variety of reasons. Talk of “the Sacraments” and “the Church” can make the Church of England seem much too exclusive and perhaps too demanding for modern tastes. Furthermore, it sounds very clerical: it sounds like the sort of thing which only priests bother about. There is also a significant practical point: even if sacramental ministry were desirable, it usually requires plenty of priests, and we don’t have enough priests to go around.
So it might well seem that the traditional understanding of baptism is no longer relevant in today’s Church of England. Long gone are the days when there were lots of infant baptisms and teenage confirmations. And when was the last time you or I were party to a serious conversation about the role of the sacraments in bringing us into a transforming relationship with Jesus Christ? And when did anyone last talk about “the Church”?
So what are the options going forward? We shall explore some of these in the days ahead.