Cb4B was CwoB

Over at the Episcopal Café a discussion has appparently drawn to an inconclusive close on what is variously known as "communion before baptism," "communion without baptism," and (more confusingly for those who remember or still use the term in its older sense) "open communion." The discussion was launched from an unlikely port: the story of a Japanese UCC minister disciplined for this practice.

I have many concerns about this practice, by whatever name, and with the arguments used to support it, about most of which I have written in the past on this blog. This includes the irony of emphasis on the Baptismal Covenant while diminishing actual baptism to what seems an optional or at best secondary place in sacramental life; the loss of Morning Prayer as an alternative form of worship in many places, precisely at a time when a larger number of the unbaptized might be present; and a general interest in being hospitable and inclusive. But ultimately it seems to me that Cb4B is the wrong answer to a very real problem, or set of problems.

My greatest concern is not that the odd unbaptized individual might receive communion, or even the disciplinary lapse by which clergy in this church think it within their competence to issue a general invitation for those not baptized to receive communion.

Rather — and this comes through in some of the comments following the story cited above — it is that we risk a great devaluation of baptism, or a confusion about what baptism means in relation to being a member of the Body of Christ, at least from our perspective as part of a sacramental and catholick church.

Part of the problem, as I tried to address it at the Café, is the emphasis on sin in the Western tradition, thanks largely to Augustine of Hippo and those who emphasized this element in his work at the Reformation, including Cranmer. Thus sin becomes a lens to see both baptism and the eucharist, in ways not quite so highlighted in the Gospels and Epistles that give us what little we have to go on about either rite — both of which, if truth be told, evolve and develop in the Apostolic and Patristic era into something like their present forms.

This much can be said, however: baptism is primarily a rite of initiation into a new life, through death to self and sin, in union with Christ. The reason it rids of sin is not just by means of a "washing" or purification as in the baptism of John, but rather a union with Christ in his death. As Paul draws out this theology in Romans 6-7, it is about our being no longer subject to the law because we have died, or been liberated from its slavery. (Paul, as usual, tries to balance two analogies simultaneously, not always successfully!) It is through baptism that we come to be "united with him in his death" and come "to share in his resurrection."

And the Holy Eucharist is the celebration of that resurrection, which is not just a future event but is made real in our own bodies as we join at the Eucharistic table and are re-em-bodied and re-membered into Christ's living Body on Earth, the Church. Cranmer, and the Protestant Reformers generally, tended to fix the Eucharist to Calvary, and focus on the Paschal and Last Supper aspects of the celebration, and concerns of individual salvation: but these need not be the only emphases in our approach to this Sacrament. The rich material of the post-Apostolic era (the Didache, for example) show that early on the emphasis shifts from the personal to the corporate, and to celebration of the unified body of the Church, Christ's Body on Earth, typified in the grain gathered together and made one bread, which is only broken so that we can consume it and thereby be made One.

So, in brief, this is my argument for maintaining the traditional pattern: initiation followed by celebration. You become a member of the Body before you celebrate you membership in it. The practical concerns of a larger number of unbaptized seekers, the urge to be hospitable and inclusive, and so on, can — and must — be addressed: but there are more effective and theologically coherent ways to do so than through inverting this sequence, which tends to rob baptism of its fundamental character as a liminal rite by which one passes from this life into the risen life of God, as a member of the Body of Christ.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG