A Theology For The Renewal Of The Baptismal Covenant

The separation of confirmation from baptism in the West has left an enduring legacy of unease among paedobaptist Christian theologians. If baptism is indeed the full and complete rite of initiation into the church, what is the role of confirmation, whether as a sacrament (Roman Catholic) or a catechetical and social rite of passage (Anglican, Lutheran, Reformed)? Is a baptized but unconfirmed child not really a full member of the church? Adult-baptizing churches maintain baptism's full initiatory status by reserving baptism until children are old enough to make their own commitments, but this still leaves the unbaptized children somehow both inside yet outside the church (see chapter 4). In infant-baptizing traditions, one way of dealing with the problem is to treat confirmation and other occasions in later life simply as renewals of baptism. In this way, baptism itself retains its significance as full, complete entry into the church while asserting that its promises are capable of being renewed after the child reaches the age of discretion.

After some decades of exploring pastoral and theological questions and seeking to understand the ritual inheritance, several churches have developed a new, but historically rooted pattern: Pastoral occasions for the renewal of the promises of baptism are provided in recently revised service books of the Lutheran, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, and Methodist churches (perhaps in others as well), and some thinking in the Roman Catholic church takes a similar direction. One conviction that informs these new rites is that nothing should qualify the completeness of baptism. Baptism is not partial admission into Christ and his people. One is not merely baptized. A single-stage rite represents the christological wholeness of baptism. Such renewing of the promises of baptism as one may do subsequent to baptism itself is not initiatory, but is a voluntary action by a competent Christian person. (Following from this principle, several churches, in their recent baptismal rites, have, for the first time, associated with the baptismal action explicatory prayers and gestures signifying the Holy Spirit. Fullness of meaning is carried forth by fullness of sign.) It might be noted that churches of the believer's baptism tradition, although they do not, of course, have a rite of confirmation to complement infant baptism, may, without compromising their distinctive understanding of baptism, find congenial a formal, repeatable act of renewing baptismal promises. The experience of Christians within the baptized life is much the same in all communions, and it may well be supported by similar pastoral measures. Some occasions of renewing one's baptismal vows belonge to the ordered life of communal worship: Baptism is closely linked with the Holy Communion; what is begun in baptism (birth) is sustained in the Eucharist (feeding). Thus, every partaking in the eucharistic bread and wine may be thought of as a renewing of baptism. As one is present at the baptism of someone else and takes part in the corporate statement of the baptismal promises, one's own promises are renewed. The baptismal promises may be restated by a congregation at times, such as the Easter Vigil, even if there are no actual baptisms. Every time one says the Apostles' Creed, one is put in touch with the baptismal covenant. In addition to such occasions which belong to the structured, more or less schedulable life of the community, the renewing of the promises of baptism may be called forth by events in the unique biography in faith of any Christian. Several churches list three occasions for renewing the baptismal promises: confirmation, reception, and reaffirmation. (1) Confirmation is understood as the first occasion on which someone who was baptized at a young age makes a public avowal of Christian faith. Important things happen deep in the religious awareness of young people. Persons differ, and social situations vary. Yet the prolonged crisis of growing up and coming into adulthood in today's society has, for members of the faith community, a spiritual aspect, often intense and life-shaping. The church should help persons understand what is happening in the light of the will of God—help them find a vocabulary. It should welcome moments of new religious awareness and self-dedication and provide ways in which such moments can be interpreted and celebrated. Confirmation can serve such a pastoral function. A new stirring in a Christian believer's conscious in relation with God is referred to the fundamental starting point of that relation: baptism. One's present stands in creative bonding with one's past—a defining past even in which God has pledged to be forever faithful. (2) Reception refers to the occasions (frequent in a mobile, individualistic society) on which persons who have been affiliated with one Christian communion seek, as baptized adults, to identify with another—carrying out the commitments of baptism in a new community of faith. Such persons are welcomed through joining, not in something specific to the new denomination, but through reaffirming, in a new and chosen society of believers, the common Christian promises. These promises provide a mark of recognition and continuity in an occasion of some personal discontinuity. It is important to note that even though the service books use three terms, the persons in all three categories are doing the same thing—renewing the covenant of baptism. (3) Thus the third category, reaffirmation, may bring to expression occasions which do not fit the relatively defined terms confirmation and reception. Much experience of Christian life in the modern age is troubled and discontinuous. Alternative periods of commitment and disengagement, ecstasy and dullness may alternate with one another; periods of active life in the church may be followed by disillusion and dropping out, and then return. The renewing of the fundamental promises of baptism may be used to mark a person's restoration after a period of lapse. Such an occasion should not be carried out in such a way as to seem penitential. Whatever regret and struggle may have preceded it, the public event should be joyful and welcoming. Christian experience is marked not only by times of return, but by times of discovery, rededication, and fresh beginnings, in one's spiritual life. These can be recognized in the life of a church by assisting persons to touch, at moments of newness, their basic starting place, baptism. Most churches which have entered this pastoral/liturgical opportunity in their recent service books have not been very prescriptive about how it is to be used, leaving the matter up to congregational experience and pastoral imagination. The Presbyterian church, however, has listed persons for which such a rite would be suitable: persons making public profession of faith, persons who have been estranged from the church, a congregation making a corporate act of renewal, the sick and the dying, those engaged in pastoral counseling, and those being received as members by transfer. Such a list should not seem complete and limiting, but rather suggestive of the possibilities that one communion sees in the public renewal of the promises of baptism.