Rector’s Reflections
Monday 20th January 2025
Baptism in Today’s Church: Time for a Change?
In the current series of reflections, we are exploring how the traditional approach to baptism and confirmation within the Church of England is changing in response to changes in theological fashions, and also in response to changes in church life and in wider society. Indeed, changes in theology often reflect changes in society and in how people experience the realities of church life. Nothing ever stands still.
On Friday, we explored the idea of re-branding baptism so that it becomes a membership ritual: baptism, with or without confirmation, becomes the public ceremony by which someone becomes an official member of the Christian club, which is usually taken to mean membership of the local congregation. This re-branding is contrary to the official theology of the Church, but it remains popular none the less. Why is this? In large part I think it is because it relates to another development in Church life, which I wish to write about in today’s Reflections.
In recent years, the life of the Church of England has become increasingly focussed on evangelism, and evangelism defined in a very narrow way: basically, evangelism is seen in terms of getting more people to come to church, and more particularly in terms of getting lots of people to join your own particular congregation. In theory, evangelism is about sharing the good news of the gospel, which can be done in lots of different ways. It may or may not lead to men and women becoming regular churchgoers. But in practice , evangelism is usually seen as a way of increasing church attendance. So baptism and confirmation are increasingly seen in terms of whether or not they are effective in getting people to come to Church.
For these purposes some groups of people are considered to be more important than others. The Church of England currently stresses the need to get “children and families” into church. When one looks at the age-profile of a typical congregation, one can understand the anxiety which is driving much of this focus on work with children and young people, and of course there is great scope to develop and increase our existing work with young people. There are some excellent new initiatives in this area. But the danger is that the emphasis on young people and families can be seen to undervalue the importance of other segments of the population, for example the middle-aged and the elderly. Surely we can have a Church which values every age group?
Be that as it may, many churches now look at baptism and confirmation in very pragmatic terms: will they get more people into church, especially more young people and families? Effective strategies to achieve this goal will vary according to the context of the parish. One approach is to require families seeking baptism for one of their children to attend Sunday worship for several occasions beforehand, and to always place the baptism itself in the main Sunday service, regardless of whether this is convenient or appropriate for the family in question. The theory is that by requiring the family to jump through one or two hoops in order to get their child baptised, they will all be inspired to become regular members of the congregation.
But does this approach work? On occasion, it will indeed work. But on other occasions, it will have the opposite effect. And in some, perhaps most, situations, it will make no difference at all. Families will know more about Christianity, which is good, but they won’t necessarily become faithful members of the local congregation.
My personal view is that every situation is different, and so a “one size fits all” approach to baptism and confirmation is both inappropriate and ineffective. I would also add that in my opinion it seems arrogant and perhaps hypocritical for the Church authorities to be telling other people how they should live their lives. The Church can make suggestions in relation to the practice of baptism and confirmation, but it is not right for the Church to order people about. And, from a pragmatic point of view, there is no evidence that forcing people to jump through hoops will necessarily lead to increased congregations. It might- or it might not.
An underlying problem with seeing baptism in terms of growing a church congregation is that it tends to leave God out of the picture. What if baptism and confirmation were actually about what God was up to in our lives and our world? What would Baptism look like if we re-discovered a focus on God? We shall explore this further in tomorrow’s reflections.