CHAPTER 1
THE ETHOS OF THE 1979BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER
The baptismal rite in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer represented a radical departure fromits predecessor rites. It has put in place a new theology of baptism, focused less on washing fromsin and more on making disciples; a new ecclesiology, shaped around the baptized members,not around the clergy; and a new initiatory process, centered around a baptismal rite that iscomplete in and of itself. These shifts have been paralleled by changes in the ritual procedureitself. Baptisms, which in earlier years were private and frequent, have become significant publicoccasions in the life of the worshipping assembly. In this chapter, we will examine the baptismalrite of the 1979 BCP to uncover its theology and liturgical ethos.
To appreciate the ethos of the 1979 prayer book, as well the radical nature of its revision, wemust begin with a look at the situation the revisers inherited. The 1928 book included a baptismalrite and a baptismal theology that stretched back to the sixteenth century, in the midst of theEnglish Reformation's attempt to purge the church of traditional religion.
ANGLICAN BAPTISM BEFORE 1979
Prior to the revision process leading to the 1979 Book of Common Prayer, the baptismal rite inthe Episcopal Church was essentially that of Thomas Cranmer's 1552 Book of Common Prayer.In an earlier revision, in 1549, Cranmer had translated the medieval rite from Latin into Englishand had added some text from Lutheran baptismal rites. But in 1552 he had stripped out suchmedieval ceremonies as exorcism, the blessing of the font, and anointing the candidate with oil;reordered some components of the 1549 rite (for example, shifting the sign of the cross frombefore the water bath to afterward); and added a post-baptismal prayer of thanksgiving, askingGod to "regenerate this infant" and to "receive him for thy own child by adoption." Both ofCranmer's rites included a lengthy charge to the godparents to ensure that the child was broughtup to know the creed, the Ten Commandments, and the Lord's Prayer, and to live a godly life.Additionally, the book supplied a similar form for baptism in private houses—and private baptismbecame increasingly prevalent in early modern England.
Later English prayer books, in 1559, 1604, and 1662, left Cranmer's basic structure intact.The 1662 book made a few minor changes to the baptismal liturgy, but only two significant ones.The 1662 book added a petition to "sanctify this water to the mystical washing away of sin" to theprayer just prior to its administration, and added a vow to "obediently keep God's holy will andcommandments, and walk in the same" to the end of the affirmation of the creed. The formerrestored some of the sacramental emphasis lost in the 1552 revision when the blessing of thefont was dropped, while the latter was a step toward acknowledging that the Christian life isabout behavior as well as belief. The 1662 prayer book also added a separate rite for thebaptism of adults, though its structure and most of its content were drawn from the more familiarliturgy for the public baptism of infants.
Cranmer's prayer books retained the medieval rite of confirmation—but reinterpreted for aProtestant church. In the early church, there had been a variety of baptismal procedures, and bythe fourth century, a post-baptismal anointing became increasingly accepted as a part of therite. The Roman pattern, in which one post-baptismal anointing was reserved to the bishop,became the root of confirmation, once presbyters were allowed to baptize. This episcopalceremony, designed for children after baptism and termed "confirmation," was quite separatefrom baptism in most of the West by the eighth and ninth centuries. Cranmer discarded theanointing, kept the hand-laying, and transposed confirmation to serve as a way for adolescentsto mark the completion of catechizing. Later, English Protestants would use this justification,sometimes adding, as Richard Baxter did, that it allowed those baptized as infants to claim thebaptismal covenant for themselves. Cranmer's prayer books therefore made baptism the firststage of a two-part initiatory process.
Cranmer's baptismal rite was marked by several features. It was a rite for infants: Cranmerexpected children to be baptized within days of birth, and because of the Church of England'smonopoly status, it was impossible for him to imagine an unbaptized adult who was also asubject of the monarch. It was also framed as a washing from sin: baptism's purpose was theindividual's spiritual cleansing. Baptism was sacramental, and the liturgical text asserted that thecandidate was regenerated by the rite, but anything resembling the blessing of water had beenremoved, along with anointing. Finally, baptism was not, in itself, complete: the newly baptizedwas to be instructed, and later, at adolescence, return for confirmation. Only confirmationconferred full membership in the church.
The English prayer books had, of course, come to North America in the colonial era. Whenthe newly founded Episcopal Church adopted the 1789 Book of Common Prayer, it used theexisting English baptismal rite as its starting point, cutting it down while leaving the theology, withits emphasis on cleansing from sin, untouched. The next prayer book revision, in 1892, didnothing to change this. It added some stage directions, and it slightly altered the provisions toshorten the service. Both books made similar changes to the form of baptism in private housesand the form for the baptism of adults, cutting material but retaining the underlying theology. TheAmerican church still used Cranmer's baptismal rite.
The next American prayer book, in 1928, did not make substantive changes. The 1928 BCPstreamlined the many, separate rites for adults and children, and domestic and church-basedbaptism into a single liturgical form (while offering a set of directions to indicate which parts of theliturgy might be done at home and which at the church). Nevertheless, the rite still assumed thebaptism of infants as normative. This was reflected in several places, not least in the rubrics,which most often referred to children, often without accommodation for adult candidates (forexample, in the rubric concerning the gender of godparents). The 1928 revision also adjustedsome familiar texts and rubrics. The most significant change altered the blessing of the font,which had been added in 1662. The new form was changed to resemble, structurally, theeucharistic prayer, in place of what had been a collect. Despite the textual changes, thetheology of the baptismal rite remained the same as it had been in Cranmer's prayer book. Therite was primarily focused on cleansing the candidate from sin, whether original (the flawednature we inherit at birth) or actual (those things one has actually done). Baptism in the 1928BCP was framed as what my liturgics professor once termed "celestial fire insurance," and it wasvery much geared toward keeping the baby (and it was almost always a baby) out of hell. Theimagery and language in the rite that concerned joining the body of Christ was minimal, while theemphasis on washing off sin and on regeneration was heavy.
The performance of the rite under the 1928 book was fundamentally similar to what it hadbeen under Cranmer. Baptism according to the 1928 BCP was generally a private affair. As RuthMeyers has shown, for all that the prayer book rubrics indicated that baptism should be donepublicly in the presence of a congregation, the prevailing practice was for it to be done privately.Indeed, some commentators went out of their way to rationalize the prevailing practice,acknowledging the rubric but creating a large array of exceptions or stretching the meaning of"public" baptism to cover baptisms done in the church building but outside the normal schedule ofpublic worship. Infant baptism was normative—adult baptism was rare. Massey Shepherd, inhis commentary on the 1928 BCP, insisted that the rite should be done in public with acongregation present, but he also urged that it be done as soon as possible after birth: "we arecommanded in Scripture to bring little children to Christ. (Many parents are unpardonably lax infulfilling this duty and privilege.)" As one would expect, given such an insistence on earlybaptism, there was little preparation of either parents or sponsors of infant candidates, but therewas also apparently little preparation of adult candidates.
The 1928 American Book of Common Prayer, much like its predecessors, offered a baptismalrite that in its theology was largely indistinguishable from that authored by Cranmer.Nevertheless, the 1928 book streamlined the liturgical texts, and it showed the stamp of a higherchurchmanship, with a mandatory consignation and an elaborate blessing of the water. Thesetextual shifts would be further developed in the next revision, even as the theology of baptismwould undergo a revolutionary change.
The process of revision
The revision process that culminated in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer was itself a significantchange from the process used in prior revisions. For the first time, there was extensive fieldtesting of new liturgical texts. The Standing Liturgical Commission (SLC) proposed anamendment to the church's constitution to allow trial use of new liturgies; the amendment passedits first reading in the 1961 General Convention and was given final approval in 1964. Also in1964, the General Convention instructed the Commission to prepare a plan for prayer bookrevision, which was approved in 1967. The SLC's plan created several drafting committees, eachwith their own section of the prayer book. Committees were chaired by SLC members andstaffed by persons appointed by the Commission. The committees drew on 260 consultants whoreviewed their work. The committees then incorporated the responses before forwarding theirdrafts to the SLC, which had final review before the texts were published as Prayer BookStudies. These Prayer Book Studies were available for trial use, and a network of diocesanliturgical commissions was formed to gather feedback from parish use, forwarding this on to theSLC.
Once a full range of liturgical services had been drafted (in Prayer Book Studies 18 through24), this material was authorized by General Convention for trial use as Services for Trial Use(known colloquially as the "Green Book," for its olive cover) in 1970. A revision of these services,plus new material, was approved by the next General Convention in 1973 and published asAuthorized Service (the "Zebra Book," for its unsettling cover). Further revisions were made andcirculated as the Draft Proposed Book of Common Prayer. With a few changes, this wasapproved by General Convention as the Proposed Book of Common Prayer in 1976. It was givenits second reading and final approval in 1979, as the Book of Common Prayer.
This lengthy and exhaustive process was quite unlike that used in earlier prayer bookrevisions. The reliance on trial use meant that the liturgical texts had been thoroughly "road-tested"before given their final form. The drafting committees included liturgiologists, parishclergy, at least one anthropologist, two literature professors, and a poet. There was extensiveand broad scholarly input as a result. Liturgical study in the twentieth century had becomeincreasingly ecumenical, as scholars studied at some of the same institutions, gathered formeetings, and shared an interest in the same texts from the early church. The result wassubstantial, informal interchange among the churches. In addition to these informal influences,the Standing Liturgical Commission consulted with other denominations and with other,autonomous churches within Anglicanism during the revision process. The result of this wideconsultation was a prayer book unlike any of its predecessors.
The baptismal theology of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer
In order to celebrate the initiation rites of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer with integrity, onemust grasp the essential features of the prayer book's baptismal theology. It is marked by abaptismal ecclesiology, an emphasis on baptism as the entry into discipleship, and an assertionthat baptism is full initiation.
Baptism became the defining identity marker for Episcopalians, and the church placed arenewed emphasis on the importance of the ministry of the laity in the world. Looking at thechurch more broadly, the same insight was dawning in other denominations, as such diversetheologians as Hans Küng, Karl Rahner, Robert Hovda, and Robert Farrar Capon defined thechurch not as the institution but as the "whole people of God," with distinctions between theordained and the laity being simply a matter of different gifts and functions, given by God for thesake of the people as a whole. In this view, the liturgy does not belong to the institutionalchurch, or to the clergy; it is the common property of the whole people of God. Liturgy is a "publicwork"—something done for the good of the people. The clergy, and more specifically the bishopsand their presbyters, are ordained as custodians of word and sacrament, and so they have aparticular accountability to the assembly for what happens in the liturgy. But they do not own theliturgy.
Further, the liturgy as constituted by the 1979 BCP (and as visible in the early church too)requires the active participation of the whole people of God—the entire liturgical assembly. AsRahner and Kü;ng noted in the larger context, the whole people of God is involved in the liturgicalact. As Louis Weil put it, "the celebration of the liturgy is the shared activity of all the assembledpeople." The laity are understood to have an active role in each and every one of the liturgicalforms in the 1979 prayer book.
In promoting the place of the laity and ordering the life of the church around baptism, theprayer book was quite explicit about two things: one became a member of the church solelythrough baptism, with no other additional rite required; and there was no two-stage process ofmembership, with the baptized as junior members and the confirmed as full members. Theprayer book is quite explicit: "Holy Baptism is full initiation by water and the Holy Spirit intoChrist's Body the Church." The book adds, "The bond which God establishes in Baptism isindissoluble." One becomes a full member in baptism, and one cannot lose that status by anymeans.
This was, of course, a stunning reversal of traditional Anglican thought. From the earliestdays of the reformed Church of England, baptism was only the first stage of initiation. It madeone a member of a sort—one was still barred from participation in much of church life. Accordingto the prayer book, one could not receive communion until one was confirmed. Many diocesesalso demanded confirmation of those who would be married or stand as godparents. Ultimately,this rubric was not enforced for communion, but instead one was required to know thecatechism—a standard of learning was required, rather than the prayer book's insistence oncompletion of a ritual. When the prayer book's requirement was loosened in 1662, to require thatone be confirmed or "ready and desirous of confirmation," the church hierarchy focused itsattention on the clergy, enforcing requirements that they prepare and present candidates forconfirmation. Only in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries did confirmation become popularand frequent; it was then that confirmation became the de facto prerequisite for communion, astatus it continued to hold into the twentieth century. For Anglicans before the mid-twentiethcentury, then, baptism was never full initiation.
Because infant baptism was the statistical norm in the Anglican tradition, proposals to makebaptism "full initiation" ran squarely into the problem of whether communion should be offered tosmall children. The common practice in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had been towithhold communion until confirmation, but, influenced by the Parish Communion movement, atleast by the 1950s some clergy were administering communion to unconfirmed children as youngas five. Some of those involved in the revision of the prayer book were initially wary of makingbaptism the gate to communion, envisioning at least some sort of delay, perhaps to age six oreight. Others took a different view, arguing that baptism should admit one to communion,regardless of the age of the candidate. Ultimately, the 1970 General Convention authorized theadmission of children to communion before they were confirmed. By making baptism fullinitiation, the 1979 prayer book had to fight the assumptions the church had absorbed from thislong tradition. The image of confirmation as an essential blessing and a completion of baptismwas powerful in the imagination of some of Anglo-Catholic sympathies, while those of a moreEvangelical persuasion insisted that one could not participate in a sacrament without knowledgeand understanding of its meaning. A rubric in the proposed text for the baptismal rite would haverequired communion of the neophytes at their baptism, regardless of age, but this was droppedat some point between the 1975 revision of the text and the Draft Proposed Book of 1976.Nevertheless, the articulation of baptism as "full initiation" implied admission to communion.Finally, in 1988, the House produced a set of guidelines for infant communion that affirmedcommunicating infants at their baptism, leaving subsequent communion until such time as thechildren and their parents ask for it. The 1988 edition of the Book of Occasional Servicesincluded a rubric inviting (but not requiring) communion of the newly baptized infant; the initialdraft would have mandated it.
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