Cb4B 2 GC

The Diocese of Eastern Oregon is bringing "communion without baptism" or "communion before baptism" to the General Convention. You can read about it here.

My observation in response to pitching this as "radical inclusivity" is simple: The church is radically inclusive and baptism is the means by which people are included. Communion is the celebration of that inclusion, not its means.

It is supremely ironic that a church that spends so much energy (rightly) celebrating the baptismal covenant could then turn its back on its significance in what seems a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of these two sacraments, and their interrelationship.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

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

The (Other) Covenant

...The Baptismal Covenant, that is.

One would have to be living under a rock to be unaware of the prominence of the Baptismal Covenant of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer in our current ecclesiastical life and discourse. Not only is it regularly recited as part of every baptism, but it is also used in most Episcopal parishes as part of a public reaffirmation of baptismal vows several times each year. More than that, it is often cited as undergirding a particular baptismal theology that is brought to bear on issues apart from baptism itself.

I have long been aware of an inner misgiving about the extent to which the Baptismal Covenant has been employed outside of the context of baptism and reaffirmation. It was only on reading Dr. Ruth A. Meyer’s essay in the Chicago Consultation’s collection of essays on the proposed Anglican Covenant, The Genius of Anglicanism, that my misgivings took on a more precise form. This was not due to anything she said in particular, but the text stirred my mental pot. Her essay was designed to contrast the Baptismal Covenant with the proposed Anglican Covenant, and to explore the meaning of the word covenant itself. Hence the pot-stirring.

Long story short, it seems to me upon reflection that our Baptismal Covenant — in particular in the last two questions which form its coda — has exuberantly wandered into areas that are not necessarily baptismal, nor indeed necessarily Christian, and that this has distorted our baptismal theology by incorporating elements which, while certainly not inimical to it, do not properly belong to it. The liturgical revisers have gone a Milvian Bridge too far.

Let me elaborate: In case you don’t trust your memory, here are the two “questions” in question.

Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself? Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?

They were added to the rite, along with the other questions (but one — more on that anon), as a coda to the Apostles’ Creed, as identifying “some of the principal commitments that are inherent in the baptismal life.” (Prayer Book Studies 26, Supplement, p 98.) That these virtues should be practiced by all who are baptized is beyond question, but to coopt them as particularly baptismal is to some extent to water down the principal and truly characteristic features of baptism. The irony is that the same study document includes a chapter on “the Breakdown of Christendom” while the revisers were still within the thrall of that world-view. For obviously the commandment to love ones neighbor is Jewish, and the concept of the respect for the dignity of every human being is a feature of many if not most philosophical and religious traditions, perhaps most importantly rabbinic Judaism. One would certainly hope that all baptized persons will practice these virtues — what one would also hope is that any human being would practice these virtues whether baptized or not.

What I am suggesting in all of this is that at least some of our current confusion about the nature of baptism may be a result of the this revision. The revisers were keenly aware of baptism as a “border rite” marking “the boundary between Church and not-Church”; and that “being a good member of society does not necessarily support being a good Christian” (ibid., 38). Yet that did not prevent their falling precisely into the Christendom trap by including two general (and admittedly important) aspects of human virtue as the tail end of an explicitly Christian — perhaps the most intrinsically Christian — act.

It appears that in the process of creating the revised baptismal rite, those responsible lost sight of the basic context: the double meaning of baptism as remission of sin and incorporation into the church. The revisers had so lost sight of the “sin” aspect that in the proposed version (Prayer Book Studies 26, p. 13) they omitted the question, “Will you persevere in resisting evil, and, whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?” (It made it in to the 1976 Draft Proposed Book.) They did include the questions that concern the Christian life, qua Christian, that is, as part of the church: the apostles’ teaching, fellowship and worship, and the responsibility to proclaim the gospel. But the following questions, while, as I say, commendable in themselves, are hardly peculiar to baptism.

What exactly is “Christ” in all persons? If this is shorthand for “the divine image” well and good — but is that either what “Christ” means or what people will take it to mean? Doesn’t this usage, particularly linked with an originally and profoundly Jewish commandment (“love your neighbor as yourself” — Leviticus 19:18) form a kind of Christian supersessionism if not triumphalism? What is “Christ” in my non-Christian neighbor? (I may well be comfortable thinking that way, as I acknowledge Christ to be “the divine image” in perfection; but would my Jewish, Buddhist, or Muslim neighbor, to say nothing of my atheist friends, consider that an honor? In an increasingly pluralistic society, this now seems a kind of flabby or semi-conscious imperialism.

Even more, the call to respect the dignity of every human being is incumbent on every human being in virtue of their being human — it is a responsibility of our common humanity, not something additional taken on at baptism. To respect the dignity of every human being is not uniquely — or sad to say even characteristically — Christian. It is in fact profoundly disrespectful of the dignity of non-Christian human beings so to co-opt this universal human mandate as part of our peculiar Baptismal Covenant.

This overgeneralization or “spread” has had, it seems to me, the unfortunate consequence of muddying the baptismal waters and confusing or confounding being “a decent moral human being” and “being a member of the body of Christ” through initiation into that body by baptism. What purports to be a “baptismal theology” becomes another instance of Christendom at work, of a generic form of humanism.

This is by no means intended as a slap at humanism! I consider myself a humanist, and perhaps that explains my touchiness at seeing what appears to be a Christian co-option of a virtue that predates it. The failure to keep the distinction between humanism and Christianity has continued the 19th century blurring whereby “Christian” becomes not a marker denoting membership in the Body of Christ, but the very kind of vague compliment describing “a good person” that I find so repellent when used in phrases like, “that’s very Christian of you” or the converse, “you are being un-Christian.” It reminds me too much of The Worst Sermon I Ever Heard, which began (and I can remember it verbatim because it was such a shock after having heard Isaiah 1:17 as part of the first reading), “The corporal works of mercy are uniquely Christian.” (The sermon ended, “We mustn’t be like Zacchaeus, climbing trees to get away from Jesus...” Yes, it was that bad.)

But I digress. I sense we are experiencing unintended consequences, and a baptismal theology that has lost its roots in incorporation into Christ. Is it any wonder people are seeing no problem with “Communion without baptism” — if what baptism is about is being “a decent moral person” whose dignity ought to be respected as such — who are we to say that sacramental baptism should be a prerequisite to sacramental communion? If baptism is primarily about how one acts, rather than who one has become by means of it, we are treading deeply Pelagian waters, it seems to me. (Also noting that, as the tradition has it, while baptism is a prerequisite for participation in communion, so is being a moral person, living “in love and charity” with ones neighbors.)

So my question is not, Have these two questions improved our ability to live as moral human beings? I hope they have; indeed, I think perhaps they have. My question is, What has over thirty years of hearing these questions and proclaiming our assent done to our conception of baptism?

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

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