A Rite on the Edge: The Language of Baptism and Christening in the Church of England

By Sarah Lawrence

Using a new interdisciplinary approach to practical theology, A Rite on the Edge, reflects theologically on the findings of research conducted by Sarah Lawrence into baptism in the Church of England and in English culture more widely, using insights and research methods from corpus linguistics.

• Language: English
• Publisher: SCM Press
• Release date: May 7, 2013
• ISBN: 9780334058526

Book preview

A Rite on the Edge

A Rite on the Edge

The Language of Baptism and Christening in the Church of England

Sarah Lawrence

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© Sarah Lawrence 2019

Published in 2019 by SCM Press

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Scripture quotations are from New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright © 1989, 1995 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

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978-0-334-05850-2

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Contents

List of figures

Foreword

Introduction

1. The problem of ‘baptism’ and ‘christening’

2. What’s in a word?

3. The history of ‘baptism’ and ‘christening’ in the English language

4. Christening, baptism and the giving of a name

5. Marriage-like vows

6. Godparents

7. ‘Just an excuse for a party’: Joy and celebration in baptism

8. Yes, but is it really Christian baptism?

9. Whose Church is it anyway?

10. Reintroducing ‘christening’ to Christian approaches to baptism

Appendix 1: A note on methodology

Appendix 2: Corpora consulted

Bibliography

List of figures

Figure 1: EEBO n-gram for baptized and christened (as verbs)

Figure 2: Word usage in texts, 1500–70, by religious group

Figure 3: Old Bailey Proceedings, use of baptism as opposed to christening for each group over time

Figure 4: Baptism and christening used to mean Christian initiation in Hansard, records of debates in the Houses of Parliament

Figure 5: Baptism and christening in spoken church contexts in the British National Corpus

Figure 6: Baptism and christening in spoken secular contexts in the British National Corpus

Figure 7: Comparison of baptism and christening used to talk about Christian initiation in newspapers 1995–2015

Figure 8: Twitter messages without any clear church connections

Figure 9: Twitter messages with clear church connections

Foreword

How I wish this fascinating, lucid book had been available 40 years ago when I started work as an assistant curate in the Church of England. In those days, I conducted what I would have called ‘baptismal visits’ with parents seeking what they would have called ‘christening’ for their children. A product of the rationalist liberal modernist world view that produced Vatican 2, the New English Bible and the Alternative Service Book, I believed that a combination of passionate commitment to a distinctive post-Christendom Church and cognitive clarity about Christian discipleship should enlighten and convert ‘nominal’ Christians seeking christening for their children (apparently as a matter of unthinking vestigial habit) into keen church members actively living out their public faith promises as baptized members of the community.

Imagine my disappointment when, having appeared to have signed on the dotted line with informed consent to all this before the day, most of the families of baptized infants never appeared within the church doors again after the ceremony itself. In my darker moments, I felt used and disappointed. Why had these nice, decent people who seemed honest and truthful made important promises that they did not intend to keep? Were they just social conformists seeking a kind of magical supernatural underseal for their infants, or wanting an excuse for a family party? Or, worse, had I myself failed to explain properly the nature and purpose of baptism so that it was actually my fault that they did not commit and join in?

Had I been lucky enough to have read Sarah Lawrence’s book at that time, I would have been less perplexed at the apparent mutual incomprehension between clergy and parents over baptism/christening. More importantly, I would have been less hard on them and on myself.

A Rite on the Edge reveals that I and the families I was dealing with were heirs of long traditions of two very different – but valid – understandings of baptism/christening in England. On the one hand, clergy have, over many centuries, tended to focus on baptism as a cognitively understood act of commitment and initiation into serious personal sacrifice, service, even suffering and death. In some ways, it has been understood as a conscious standing outside wider society. On the other, many lay people have sought christening for a variety of motives including welcoming children into the world, naming them, providing them with adults who care for them, even making marriage-like vows to them, and bringing them into wider relations with the surrounding community, which de facto down the centuries was Christian in a country with an established Church. While ordinary people have emphasized the emotional, social, celebratory aspects of baptism/christening, clergy have been sceptical of these motives and understandings, stressing the disciplinary and intellectual aspects of the rite; some clergy have even manifested visceral disgust at the word ‘christening’ itself. The consequence has been a tragic stand-off. People have sought baptism/christening only to be discouraged, even rejected, by the pastors and communities who spend much of their time lamenting the marginalization and depletion of the Church.

According to Sarah Lawrence, what is required is that the rite should be understood in a holistic way that respects the warmth, inclusivity and emotionality of the lay understandings – while not forgetting the potential seriousness, intellectual commitment and demands of explicit Christian commitment embodied in clerical understandings. Sarah writes, ‘Baptism without christening becomes stale and cold, a harsh creed which commands doctrinal correctness but forgets human love. Christening without baptism becomes shallow and detached from the source of its meaning and significance.’ Serious Christian commitment and having a party are not, then, necessarily mutually exclusive – that is good news, even gospel!

Sarah arrives at this humane, judicious position on the basis of novel and thorough research into the use of the words ‘baptism’ and ‘christen’ over time. The use of methods from corpus linguistics allows her – and her readers – to follow a long linguistic journey down the centuries through places like the law courts and the House of Lords so that we can better understand how the words ‘christening’/‘baptism’ have been used and what their connotations are. Sarah wears her learning lightly and presents her findings clearly. But readers should be under no illusion that this is a pioneering, important piece of practical theology which is extremely well evidenced. Thus it is a vital, vivifying resource for pastoral practice and imagination. Furthermore, it contains not a single boring word – a tribute to her real desire to communicate with readers and make a difference in an important area where Church meets world.

I have often noticed that the more commonplace something is in life, the less likely it is that someone in theology will give it any attention. It is only very recently that the Church of England has begun to critically evaluate its own part in self-marginalizing into an exclusive sectarian rather than inclusive, societal position in the life of the nation. Sarah Lawrence’s study will hasten this re-consideration, raising as it does important questions about who should be regarded as insiders and outsiders, who has the power to define the boundaries and nature of the Church, and how doctrine and liturgy should be constructed and performed at national and local levels. There are huge challenges here as the established Church, despite its rhetoric of good intentions with regard to inclusivity, continues to decline and lose the good will of those who had previously thought that this institution has a lot to do with them – even if they did not actively attend. Alongside readers in practical theology around the world, A Rite on the Edge should be read by every Church of England bishop, parish priest and ordinand, as well as by many lay people and the members of the doctrinal and liturgical committees of this and other churches. Whoever its readers are, they will not fail to be encouraged, educated, intrigued and, indeed, entertained. I very much hope that this will be the first of many brilliant books from Sarah Lawrence’s most eloquent pen. I enthusiastically welcome it, hoping that everyone who reads it will get as much enlightenment and pleasure from it as I have.

Stephen Pattison

Sometime of University of Birmingham, UK

Introduction

As I began my ordained ministry in the Church of England over ten years ago, I was struck by the very different way that clergy and churchgoers spoke about baptism, compared with non-churchgoing families who requested the rite for their children. Many clergy and congregation members saw these families as not being serious about the commitments they were making; they thought they did not understand the baptismal promises and/or did not mean to keep them. They often perceived them as being disrespectful of the church during the service itself, and were seen as abusing the rite, when they really wanted ‘just a naming ceremony’ or ‘an excuse for a party’. When I visited families, however, they seemed to me to be very serious about what they were doing. They often could not articulate the reasons why, and the reasons they did give were not very ‘religious’, but they expressed a very deep belief that this was somehow the right thing to do. They perceived the Church as being ‘their’ church, and in some ways as key to their identity as a family. They wanted their child also to have this sense of belonging to the Church and have God bless him or her.

These families came and asked the Church for a christening; the Church offered them a baptism. I began to wonder whether this was more than just a difference in language. Does it reflect a deeper difference in understanding what this rite is all about, and indeed what it means to be a Christian? I wondered whether an exploration of the different ways of speaking about baptism, between these two groups, might help clergy and churchgoers to understand better those families seeking occasional offices. I wondered whether, by beginning from a point of understanding and respect for the views of such families, the Church’s ministry to them in response to their request for a christening might become more likely to open up doors to a greater exploration of faith, rather than put them off by misunderstanding and suspecting their motives. As I began to ask these questions and to delve deeper into what was going on with baptism in England, I found myself repeatedly coming back to the difference between these two words: baptism and christening. They seemed to act as a fault line which divided people into different religious groups who did not understand one another, who effectively spoke a different language when it came to baptism. I wanted to find out whether my impressions were representative of wider patterns in English culture and religion and, if so, what the churches can do to respond to these differences.

When I started to talk to people about the research I was carrying out – that I was interested in the differences between the words baptism and christening – the responses I received were often quite striking. Those who didn’t go to church, and some of the less theologically engaged churchgoers, often looked embarrassed that they didn’t understand the difference, and felt perhaps they were missing something. Many found the word baptism vaguely uncomfortable in some way they couldn’t quite put their finger on; it was perhaps rather posh, perhaps excessively formal or religious sounding. It was the kind of technical word they often avoided using for fear of looking ignorant when they used it wrongly.

Clergy and committed churchgoers, however, sometimes had a remarkably visceral response to the word christening. One fairly senior clergyman remarked to me that it was a ‘disgusting word’. Another argued that while ‘baptism is a valid liturgical term, christening is at best an indication of poor understanding of the rite, at worst indicative of folk religion and superstition’. This sense that baptism is the ‘right’ term for the rite of Christian initiation, and christening is just the ‘unofficial title’¹ was very common.

This book explores this problem by considering how the words baptism and christening have been used in ordinary British English discourse. It is based on research that explored language in letters, books, tracts, newspapers, court transcripts, conversations, sermons, social media messages and other examples of naturally occurring language over the course of over 500 years. It is offered as an insight into how non-churchgoers see baptism, and explores whether these perspectives can be helpful as a starting point for the Church to begin to teach about the faith, or whether they are antithetical to Christianity and should be seen as obstacles to true understanding that need to be cleared away before baptismal preparation can begin. It is not a book about the Christian theology of baptism, which has been amply and ably explored in countless texts over the two millennia of the Church’s history. Many of the perspectives explored here are very different to an orthodox Christian theology of baptism. In advocating taking them seriously, I am not disregarding the Christian heritage of teaching about this dominical sacrament. I do not argue that we should change our theology of baptism from the deep heritage of the tradition by replacing it with a thin veneer of popularism. However, I do argue that the meanings of baptism found in popular ways of speaking about this rite are worthy of being taken seriously, and represent a valid starting point from which clergy and committed churchgoers can begin to help families seeking a christening to explore the riches of the faith. At heart this book is aiming to be an aid to mission, to help Christians to make sense of what families seeking a baptism really want (even if on deeper exploration what they really want is perhaps a naming ceremony rather than baptism itself). It suggests a way of connecting with such families and helping them to begin the ‘amazing journey’ of faith that can begin with a christening.²

The book is concerned with the relationship between the people of England and their established Church. Some of the findings will be relevant in other parts of the UK, but others are specific to England. Similarly, some of the ideas here will be relevant to other denominations in the UK, and others will not. The focus on the English language means that English-speaking Christians in other parts of the world will find resonances and differences with what they read here. This may provide food for thought, and encourage those in churches in other settings to ask questions of their contexts, and especially about the differences in language and perspectives inside and outside the churches in their own cultures.

The book begins in Chapters 1 and 2 by exploring the problem. Chapter 1 asks why this division in the language used to talk about this rite opened up, and whether it is significant for pastoral practice for the churches in England today. Chapter 2 argues that the words baptism and christening have very different ‘feels’ and are used in different ways in British English, and asks what these differences might mean for a theology of christening in the Church of England today. It explores the importance of language in theology, in the Church and in society, and argues for a new methodological approach in practical theology, using linguistic research methods.

Chapter 3 gives an outline of how the language of baptism and christening has changed over the course of the English language. It argues that the different origins of these two words have affected their prestige over the centuries, and caused a social and religious split in how they were used from the sixteenth century onwards, becoming particularly entrenched in the eighteenth century and persisting up to the present day.

Chapters 4–7 explore themes that arise from non-churchgoers’ use of language, especially the word christening. Chapter 4 looks at the significance of naming in popular understandings of this rite and asks whether it is theologically valid to see naming as a purely secular matter. Chapter 5 examines a new theme, which arose in connection with the word christening in the texts studied from the 1990s onwards, that of seeing baptism as an opportunity to make marriage-like vows of love and commitment towards the children. Chapter 6 considers the importance of godparents to non-churchgoing families and why godparents are much more strongly linked with christening than baptism, and what the implications of this may be for Church practice.

Chapters 7–9 then examine some of the concerns that clergy and committed churchgoers may have over the uses that non-churchgoers make of the rite of baptism. Chapter 7 examines the oft-heard concern that a christening, for such families, is ‘just an excuse for a party’. Chapter 8 then asks whether the kind of baptism associated with the word christening and valued by non-churchgoing families is really the same thing as Christian baptism, whether what families seek would be more appropriately provided for by a non-religious ceremony, and whether it devalues this dominical sacrament of the Church to use it for such secular purposes. Chapter 9 asks whether it is appropriate for the understanding of a sacrament to be altered by those whom many in the Church do not see as true members, because they are not regular churchgoers or regular contributors to the life of the Church. Is the Church something that ‘outsiders’ can have a stake in? Or does it really not make sense to use the language of ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ in a Church founded by the God who gave his only Son out of love for the whole world?

Chapter 10 concludes the book with some practical advice based on these findings, asking how churches can begin to properly value what is important to non-churchgoers in its understanding of this rite. We will see that, by understanding what is important to those who are not committed churchgoers, and re-embracing the ideas associated with the word christening as a Church, we can both learn and grow in our own theology of baptism and our ecclesiology, and build bridges to share the deep resources of our faith with those who are instinctively sympathetic to the Christian faith.

A note