Anyone making sense of the rite of Confirmation these days?

[Jamie Howison]

Hi all,
Listen, I'm just wanting to check around and see what people are doing with Confirmation these days... that proverbial rite in search of a theology. In my own context - www.stbenedictstable.ca - we practice open table, but do put real emphasis on baptism. I could rehearse some of what informs that; I've done so in a little book we've published on this topic. I'm going to assume that many of you have also come to a place of seeing participation in communion as being, at least for some people, their point of entry into the Body and something that happens prior to baptismal incorporation. Is that a fair assumption?

So I preach baptism, we proclaim a thoroughgoing theology of the Body of Christ, we celebrate our life in Christ through the shared bread and wine... and the place is full of young Mennonites and Baptists and other evangelicals who are finding a place within the great sacramental and liturgical tradition.

And then my bishop asks when we're going to have some confirmations, which always sounds like "when are you going to make Anglicans out of them?"

Yet what does confirmation "add"? Other than marking one within a particular institutional tradition, does it "do" anything that hasn't already happened in baptism, particularly given that our baptisms are almost all of adults? For anyone who is in a community that is finding resonance with the same kind of folks we are - and particularly if you're practicing open table balanced out with a strong baptismal theology - what sense are you making of confirmation?

[Mike Croghan]

Hi Jamie,

Really good question. My context is very similar to yours in that we're mostly made up of adults who have come together out of various church traditions. It's different from yours in that we're a non/post/multi/trans-denominational church with Anglican roots; we aren't actually an Anglican church. We've done both infant and adult baptisms, with most "members" (this is a vague concept for us) coming to our community as committed (and baptized) Jesus-followers from a wide variety of church traditions, some others first coming to follow Jesus while a part of our community and choosing adult baptism to celebrate that, and some others fully participating in the life of the community (we also practice open table) but not (yet) choosing to take the step of baptism. For any of these folks, even if we were officially affiliated with the Anglican Communion, I can't imagine confirmation adding anything - except, perhaps, the direct connection, through laying on of hands by the bishop, to the tradition of the historic episcopate. Our community is not officially Anglican, and we don't have bishops, but I myself am an Episcopalian, and I sort of get how that direct connection could be meaningful to many.

That said, many of the adults who make up our community have kids, and most of those kids are still quite young - zero to eight, or so. For those kids, most of whom have been baptized as infants or toddlers in our church or another church, we seem to have general consensus that we need some kind of process for enabling and recognizing the kids' taking full ownership of their identity as Jesus-followers and intentional members of the community. We don't know what that will look like, yet, but we'll need to figure it out in the next few years. :-)

Personally, I struggle a bit with infant baptism, because as an adult convert I truly believe in the reality of something called "conversion", and I tend to think it's much more significant *to the individual* than whatever theologians claim might occur when a baby is baptized. That said, I'm a strong believer in both the a) commitments made by the family and community during infant baptism, and b) the *full* participation of children in the life of the church. Our community has a somewhat different theology of infant baptism than I believe the Episcopal church does - it's much more about that commitment on the part of the community and the sharing of our abundant blessings with the new life in our midst (and inauguration of our ongoing commitment to that new life) and much less about a claimed Spiritual change in the child him/herself. But that said, I think that Spiritual transformation is real - call it conversion, repentance, commitment to follow Jesus, being "born again", etc. - and it might be abrupt or gradual or imperceptible. Some kids growing up surrounded by a Jesus-following community might not be able to remember a time when they didn't see themselves as fully committed to Jesus. But a process to enable and recognize intentional ownership of that identity, for maturing kids baptized as infants, seems important to me.

But for adults? Community-fostered disciple formation and baptism should be that process and that ceremonial celebration, it seems to me. Unless the adult in question finds meaning in a direct connection to the historic episcopate, in which case I can see that as a good reason to add on confirmation.

Sorry to be so long-winded! Good questions. :-)

Peace,
Mike