"Jeremy
Collingwood and Steve Daughtery attacked the Common Worship infant baptism
rite, and correspondence has followed. As I helped write the A S B text
(which they like), and have stood close to the CW rite the House of Bishops and
the Initiation Services Revision Committee, I put up defence. I too have some
points of preference for the ASB rite, but they are simply points of preference,
and are balanced by points where I prefer the CW text. Overall I commend the CW
rite, and have written a Grove Booklet, being published next month, for that
purpose.
The
two do themselves try to sound fair (even conceding an ASB weakness), but
still leave a general impression that they have taken against the service, and
have then gone looking for any stick with which to beat it.
Their
first small complaint is about length — yet, if the mandatory parts of
CW pages 352
to 361 are followed, there may be 90 seconds more text than in the
comparable parts of the A S B (if they count optional parts, then they
themselves are opting for longer rite). But the length of baptism services
derives from imponderables of which Commissions cannot take account — the
songs, the preaching, the
numbers of candidates, the distance to march to a font an back, and the
disruptiveness of young siblings in baptismal families.
Their
second small complaint is a fear lest the rite ‘assume that baptism is to
take place in the context of Holy Communion’ — but that is not assumed, as
page 348 (and the official folding card) make dear.
Their
first big complaint concerns the place of a response by parents and
godparents. They write that this response began the A S B rite, but in C W
‘the support of children in their Christian growth is
left until the Commission at the end
of the service [and is there done wrong]’ (italics and square brackets
mine). I read this with total incredulity. What, I thought, of the careful
questions to parents and godparents in ‘Presentation’? I read on,
following the cross-headings from the rite which highlighted each of their
paragraphs (‘The Liturgy of the Word’, ‘The Decision’ etc.), all in a
very clear sequence. BUT — and it is an extraordinary BUT — the section on
C W page 352 entitled ‘Presentation
of the Candidates’ is simply omitted by them. I read their article again; I
went to the booklet and card offprints; I checked Visual
Liturgy; and the Presentation section appears in every official text there
is. It comes at the very beginning of
the major division ‘The Liturgy of Baptism’, before ‘The Decision’.
After an optional ‘presentation’ of the infant candidates to the
congregation (which might be simply introducing families by name, or might be
omitted), there is first a question to the congregation about
welcoming and upholding the candidates (adult, child or infant), and then come
immediately the two questions which are unique to the baptism of children:
Parents
and Godparents, the Church receives these children with joy. Today we
are trusting God for their growth in faith
Will
you pray for them, draw them by your example into
the
community of faith
and
walk
with them in the way of Christ? and
In
baptism these children begin their journey of faith. You speak for them
today. Will you care for them, and help them take their place within the
life and worship pf Christ's Church?
Now,
one might argue about whether these questions overlap each other, or whether
they match the ASB form ‘you must answer both for yourselves and for these
children.’ Those are the arguments we had on the Revision Committee, and I
address them in my Grove Booklet. BUT (I need capitals) it looks either
mischievous or incompetent to enter the C E N’s public arena, there to omit
all mention of the crucial texts under your nose, and then to build your
case upon the alleged total absence of such texts. For a boxer to deride his
opponent’s strength is one thing;
but to insist he has failed to arrive and so claim a walkover, when in fact
the man is visible in the opposite corner, is quite another — the combat
cannot then even start, let alone be decided.
Their
other big complaint concerns ‘baptismal regeneration’. They acknowledge
that ‘Scripture uses efficacious language’ about baptism, but think we
should not. But surely scriptural language has prima facie claim? This was the
BCP language to which indeed the 1850 Gorham Judgment gave the interpretative key);
this was the ASB language; and this is the C W language.
I
can here only begin a rationale; but if believers treat their children as
believers (eg,. by saying the Lord’s Prayer — or almost any prayer - with
them), then, as with adults, it is proper to treat baptism as a true beginning. If clergy suspect they sometimes baptize
children of unbelievers (as the two hint), those cases are anomalous and no
basis for drafting liturgy. We could provide words like We pour some water on
you and hope the gospel will reach you one day’, but that is so far adrift
from the Scriptures (and so promiscuously promoting ‘indiscriminate baptism’)
as to be ludicrous. Sacraments function by serenely stating their own
efficacy, just as hymns assume it is believers who sing ‘ransomed, healed,
restored, forgiven’.
A real argument
awaits, a longer one; but let it be joined with the whole text in view.
"
