• Home
• Services at Saint Peter’s
• Theology
  • What We Believe
  • The Pulpit
  • The Caversham Lectures
• News
  • News and Opinion
  • The Rock Archive
  • News Archive
  • Our Printed Heritage
  • Photo Gallery
• People
  • Friends of Saint Peter’s
  • External Links
• About
  • Music at Saint Peter’s
  • Saint Peter’s Character
  • Our History
  • Church Groups
  • Staff and Contacts
  • How to Get Here
• Login
  • Parishioners’ login
  • Vestry Members’ login
• Search Saint Peter’s

About Baptism and Confirmation

Baptism of the Lord : 13 January 2013  : Luke 3: 15-16, 21-22

The first baptism I ever experienced was my Sister’s. Our small family group gathered at St John’s Rangiora on a Sunday afternoon - I don’t even think the Godparents were present. The Vicar came out from the organ loft, put on a surplice and stole, we gathered around the font, and so my Sister came to be baptised. Later, back in the car, consternation ensued when it was discovered that I had walked off with one of the order of Service cards. Already I had got into the habit of squirreling away liturgical texts for later use.

If I were to put a finger on my moment of Christian beginning it would be my Confirmation. Around the age of 13 my Father had taken me with him to Evensong. During that Service I felt a sense of warm, wonderful, inviting mystery that drew me towards it. Shortly afterwards I enrolled for Confirmation classes. These were conducted in the Vicar’s study late Sunday afternoon before Evensong. Some months later I was confirmed, along with a group of somewhere between 12 and 20 early teens, with the girls wearing the traditional white veils. For me the lead up to the Confirmation Service was a big deal, and when the Bishop laid hands on my head it really felt as though something significant had happened. From then on I was a regular at the 8 o’clock Sunday morning Service, and went on to become a server and a Sunday school teacher. These positive feelings were apparently not shared by the large cohort I was confirmed with, for I hardly ever saw them at Church again.

In point of fact, both these experiences would not be normative in the Anglican Church for much longer. When I got to theological College in the mid 70’s I found out why.

Part of it was practical. Bishops and clergy had become concerned that the majority of confirmation candidates were treating their confirmation as a church-leaving certificate. They reasoned that the Church was challenging young people to declare their faith at a time in the early teenage years when they hadn’t made up their minds about anything much. So it was decided to push confirmation out to the late teenage, early adulthood years when people would be making a deliberate decision to opt in the life of the Church.

There was another problem too. Confirmation was a sacrament in search of a theology. That was because the Church was rediscovering a more potent theology of baptism. As the Church looked back to its time of dynamic beginnings it was reminded what a big deal baptism was back then.

The preparation period was lengthy and thorough, typically over a 12-month period, with doctrine instruction; practical how to stuff about Church culture, and testimonies from mature Christians about what God had done in their lives.

Baptism only took place once a year - at the Easter Vigil, administered by the Bishop. The candidates were led down into a full immersion tank, were plunged beneath the waters three times, were then brought before the Bishop, who then anointed them with oil, and laid hands on them as a sign that they had just received the Holy Spirit. They were then admitted to communion. During the preparation time they had had to leave the Church half way through the Service, when the liturgy of the Word was over.

What did the Church understand it was doing in this impressive ceremony? Baptism was seen as a washing away of sin, God’s forgiveness of the misdeeds of ones past life, and a new start was being made with a clean slate. So impressed were Christians with this aspect of baptism that they often delayed it until the end of their lives, so as to increase their chances of avoiding judgement and getting to heaven. The clergy often pointed out what a perilous calculation this was, since death often arrives suddenly and unannounced.

Crucially, baptism was seen as the giving of the Holy Spirit. God’s very self, and primal life energy, had been poured into a Christian’s life for the purposes of spiritual transformation and moral regeneration. The Holy Spirit would make a Christian holy, like God, capable of a radically different way of life, patterned on God’s expectations of human behaviour, in contrast to the surrounding culture’s. Even more important a Christian was now connected up to God’s life giving energy, that would reverse the death dealing effects of the Fall, and would lead on to eternal life.

From an immediate practical point of view, baptism gave you full membership rights in the Church. It was an initiation ceremony. You were a Christian now, with all the privileges and responsibilities that went with it.

Notice that there was no confirmation, no two-stage entry into the Christian life. Baptism did it all. The Bishop had laid hands on the candidates during the baptismal ceremony.

Of course, our present situation is miles away from that. How did this come about?

When Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire converts poured in, sometimes with mixed motives. Baptism preparation times were drastically shortened, the occasions of Baptism were multiplied, performing baptisms was delegated to the parish clergy as the Bishop couldn’t do them all, and under relentless pressure from the laity, infant baptism began, as parents sought the good things of baptism for their children as soon as possible. That was ok so long as the parents and Godparents were convinced Christians deeply involved in the life of the Church. The later unfortunate situation of parents bringing children forward for baptism when there was no intention of taking part in the life of the Church wasn’t anticipated. Slowly but surely adult baptism, once the norm, became the exception rather then the rule.

As this happened Confirmation emerged as a separate ceremony and sacrament as a remnant of the Bishop’s prerogative in initiation rites, and as a way of these hordes of infant baptised beginner Christians completing the promises made on their behalf by others. But there were problems with the new rite of confirmation, particularly when Christianity entered northern Europe. Bishops now presided over vast dioceses covering hundreds of miles, and were now administrators rather then pastors. Usually a parish didn’t see them from one year to the next. It became hard for the clergy to arrange confirmations, and to convince their people that it mattered that they come forward for confirmation.

At the protestant reformation the Church of England decided to fix the situation by insisting that you couldn’t be admitted to communion unless you were confirmed - this was new - and by insisting that clergy instruct the candidates in the basics of the faith, the Prayer book catechism. The reformers were very keen that new believers understood what they were doing. And so confirmation got moved to the age that I was confirmed at, since this was seen as the age of discretion and of more or less adult understanding.

We can notice that the reformers, so keen on getting back to early church purity, had failed to achieve that, they had merely amended late medieval practice. But above all they had failed to see the big issue that the Church in our own time has become aware of. If you say that baptism confers the Holy Spirit, and makes you a Christian, and a member of the Church, then what exactly was going on in Confirmation, and what was the point of it? The Holy Spirit couldn’t be given decisively twice, you couldn’t be re-baptised - that would be a nonsense.

The Church in our time has faced up to its renewed understanding of baptism by virtually abolishing private baptisms, they only take place in emergencies, or when laity succeed in bullying hapless clergy into them. Baptisms now take place in the Sunday liturgy to make it clear that the candidate is meeting the local people of God whom it is expected to join. It also makes it clear that baptism is very important, not something to be done in a hole in the corner, and that there is a close connection between Baptism and Eucharist as the two most important sacraments.

The other change the Church has made is to admit baptised children to communion. At first this was done around the age of primary school admission, after a short period of instruction. Now even that has been dropped since the reasoning is that sacraments communicate at a level deeper than rational understanding.

I said at the start that confirmation got pushed out to a later age. The Church thought that this would lead to fewer confirmations, but better confirmations that would stick. What wasn’t anticipated was what has happened - the near eclipse of confirmation. Since it was no longer tied to admission to communion, there was no pressing meed for it to happen. Bishops got into the habit of doing other things during their annual visits to parishes, though some have become uneasily aware of a loss of one their key connection points with their people, and have begun to pressure their clergy to do something about it. In general, with no one asking for confirmation, and few encouraging it to happen, it began to drop out of the Church’s life.

But in reality confirmation does matter, and should be encouraged, for a reason particular to our times. We live in an era when the Church and its surrounding culture are separating out, and parting company on many key issues. When new members join the Church as adults they usually do so with little or no instruction in the Christian worldview, or any background in a church culture that has very different assumptions about community to anything in the surrounding secular society. Often and usually they bring with them into the life of the Church the habits and assumptions of the only social reality that they have ever known, and which can be quite contrary to the gospel. If they become influential opinion makers or local lay leaders in the church they can unwittingly subvert its gospel charter without even being aware that they are doing so.

But more than that, persevering in the Christian way over a lifetime in our present situation, takes all the encouragement, and informed understanding, and strengthening in Divine grace, that can be offered. Confirmation is just the opportunity for a deep immersion in the Christian faith that can meet this situation. And a new theology emerges for confirmation out of this pressing need. It is an ordination into the privileges and responsibilities of active and enthusiastic participation in the life of the Church. It is an adult saying - I choose you God, and your family the Church. This is the house that God built, and I intend to be a foundation member of it for the rest of my life. You gave your Holy Spirit to me at baptism. Now strengthen me with it continually, so that I will never fall away from you, but will grow into the fullness of life that can only come from being a Christian.