One of the best known texts from the 1979 Book of Common Prayer is the Baptismal Covenant. We often refer to it by title ”“ “Our Baptismal Covenant calls us to work for justice and peace,” or “the Baptismal Covenant makes us all evangelists” ”“ with the expectation that our audience knows exactly what we mean.
The commitments we make in the last five questions, particularly the last three, show up in mission statements and on church websites as summaries of what it means to be Christian, and I suspect that they have been the basis of many a sermon series or Lenten study.
It is gratifying for a liturgist to see such a clear example of our worship, our common prayer, sinking so deeply into our consciousness. Praying does shape believing.
The only way to keep the last three promises in the Baptismal Covenant is to keep the first two!
The last three promises are:
Will you proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ?
Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as your self?
Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?
The first two promises are essential to keeping the last three. These two commands are:
Will you continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of the bread, and in the prayers?
Will you perserver in resisting evil, and, whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?
Only by keeping the Apostles’ teaching and fellowship (thus avoiding both heresy and schism) will we be able to know Jesus Christ so we can make him known to others. Only then can we truly love our neighbors as ourselves and only then do we have any chance of knowning true justice and peace and being able to spread those.
Without the Apostles’ teaching and fellowship, we will not know Justice because we cannot know God. We will not know peace because we will not have peace with God. We will not know Jesus, so we cannot tell the Good News (=gospel) of what God has done through him.
When TEC returns to the first two promises, then we have hope of keeping the last three.
YBIC,
Phil Snyder
Amen, Deacon Phil! (#1). Well said.
Unfortunately, the way liberal activists have grossly abused the last of the five promises (striving for justice and respecting the dignity of every human being) in the Baptismal Covenant has tended to make a lot of conservative Anglicans dislike the whole thing. And the move by the ACNA to make the 1662 BCP a key doctrinal standard for orthodox Anglicanism in North America may easily lead to a similar neglect of the tremendous gains represented by the new baptismal rite in the 1979 BCP.
I sure hope that those hard-won gains won’t be lost in the coming years, as the ACNA develops a new BCP. For I think that the drastic revision of the whole initiation process in order to recover much of the richness of the patristic, pre-Constantinian model of making disciples and baptizing them into Christ’s Body the Church was and is one of the best things about the 1979 BCP. As it becomes ever clearer that we live in a post-Constantinian world now in the Global North, it becomes ever more important that we relearn how to go about fulfilling the Great Commission from our Global South brothers and sisters, and also from the early patristic Church.
I’d hate to see us throw the proverbial baby out with the dirty wathwater.
David Handy+
Passionate advocate of restoring the ancient catechumenate (suitably modified, of course) and of overhauling Anglicanism to make it fruitful and effective in our post-Christendom social context.
It seems to me that the real baptismal covenant comes before what’s labeled ‘Baptismal Covenant’ in the form of these questions and answers:
[blockquote] [i] Question [/i] Do you renounce Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God?
Answer I renounce them.
[i] Question [/i] Do you renounce the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God?
[i] Answer [/i] I renounce them.
[i] Question [/i] Do you renounce all sinful desires that draw you from the love of God?
[i] Answer [/i] I renounce them.
[i] Question [/i] Do you turn to Jesus Christ and accept him as your Savior?
[i] Answer [/i] I do.
[i] Question [/i] Do you put your whole trust in his grace and love?
[i] Answer [/i] I do.
[i] Question [/i] Do you promise to follow and obey him as your
Lord?
[i] Answer [/i] I do.
[/blockquote]
These answers have to do with establishing a relationship with Jesus Christ as savior and lord as one turns from the world, the flesh and the devil to Jesus Christ.
Then the following questions have to do with maintaining and nurturing that relationship:
[blockquote] [i] Celebrant [/i] Will you continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers?
[i] People [/i] I will, with God’s help.
[i] Celebrant [/i] Will you persevere in resisting evil, and, whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?
[i] People [/i] I will, with God’s help.
[/blockquote]
Finally, the following questions have to do with ministry that only makes sense if it proceeds from all that has gone before:
[blockquote] [i] Celebrant [/i] Will you proclaim by word and example the Good
News of God in Christ?
[i] People [/i] I will, with God’s help.
[i] Celebrant [/i] Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving
your neighbor as yourself?
[i] People [/i] I will, with God’s help.
[i] Celebrant [/i] Will you strive for justice and peace among all
people, and respect the dignity of every human
being?
[i] People [/i] I will, with God’s help.
[/blockquote]
Can anyone help me understand the difference between part 4 and part 5 of the covenant? They seem to me to be saying the same thing? (So what would be lost by omitting number 5?)
And why do reappraising people typically head for number 5 in general comment, and omit the 6 questions of repentance and faith in Christ that get you there?
I’d be grateful for help here.
Richard (#4),
I suspect people tend to see a difference between mercy ministries of compassion in promise #4 (seeking and serving Christ in all persons and loving your nieghbor) and the potentially more radical element of promoting social justice in #5 (or maybe it just hits more liberal hot buttons).
But how reappraisers can so blithely ignore so much of the rest of the Baptismal Covenant is indeed perplexing, except I guess that it’s become habitual for so many of them to ignore whatever in the liturgy they don’t like.
The triple renunciations of “the world, the flesh, and the devil” (though not in that order), and the triple adhesions to Christ that follow are, of course, drawn straight out of the classic pattern of Christian Initiation seen in many early patristic sources, including the famous [b]Apostolic Tradition[/b] (usually though uncertainly attributed to Hippolytus of Rome around AD215), and the catechumenal or mystagogical lectures of the 4th century by such eminent leaders as Cyril of Jerusalem, Ambrose, and John Chrysostom.
Alas, I suspect that one reason why so many liberals are able to ignore the implications of the Baptismal Covenant as a whole (which is clearly designed for adult converts, as in the pre-Constantinian era) is because they still think baptism is primarily for babies. If the majority of those being baptized were adult converts once again, as in the early centuries, it would be much, much harder for them to dismiss it all so casually and easily.
And if you’re the Richard Crocker+ who used to be at Truro and is now rector of St. James, Newport Beach, then all best wishes to you. May the Lord uphold you and make your ministry very fruitful.
David Handy+
The noted behavioural changes are the result of a unique “baptismal covenant” interpolation of 60’s era “theology” into a revised baptismal liturgy which is “magical” rather than formative. The result of the anthropomorphic focus is plainly evident in the ECUSA/TEC/GCC/EO-PAC which is achieving fabulous growth in the negative direction as a result. Ruth Meyers has it correct. What is occuring in the episcopal organization-political action committee is a direct result of confining the “baptismal covenant” to those phrases. What it does to souls is likewise obvious.
The older baptismal service involved the renunciation of sin and expression of belief by the person to be baptized (or by his sponsors for an infant) followed by God’s action of regeneration. The person received the action taken by God.
In the newer service, as interpreted by so many liberals, the action comes from the baptized, in promising to do things, and God is the receiver of the action rather than the doer.
We’ve turned baptism upside down.
Katherine, I think you’re spot on here. The ’79 Baptismal service is terrible, and the “baptismal covenant” has become the watchword for liberalism in the church for years. As I understand it whenever there was a Covenant God and His people, it was initiated by God and not the other way around.
David #2, can you flesh out what gains were made by the ’79 baptismal rite? I’m still yet to find the first one.
Few and far between were those who knew that the ’79 prayer book was a Trojan Horse designed to facilitate theological innovation, all the more since the secret soldiers did not show themselves for some twenty years. Now the city gates have been thrown open and the invading forces have decimated the Protestant Episcopal Church.
I was certainly not among the cognoscenti who knew of any sinister intent, as I and the rest of our congregation blindly and enthusiastically followed the Rev Charles Bennison into Services for Trial Use and the ’79 BCP. If we had known then what we know now, that he believed “We wrote the Bible, and we can change it,” it may have given some of us pause.
Katherine has put her finger on it, as the new book has opened the door for ananthropocentric rather than a theocentric religion. We have attempted, as Lucifer did, to become our own God and must battle our way back to our Father God and our Lord Jesus the Christ.
Urban T. Holmes made it clear in his essay in WORSHIP POINTS THE WAY: A Celebration of the Life and Work of Massey Hamilton Shepherd, Jr, The Seabury Press, New York, 1981, “Education for Liturgy: An Unfinished Symphony in Four Movements”, page 139-140:
“The spirit of the (1979) prayer book is inclusive, not exclusive. This means it both expects theological differences among those who participate in its rites and provokes those who find it necessary to be sectarian to reject its theological implications. There is not way to insist upon uniformity of belief. In this period of explication of the book we must expect to live with the uncertainties and frustrations begotten of pluralism.”
One must read the entire essay for the full force of the meaning of these words. But one extremely telling sentence is his statement that the book “is a product of a corporate, differentiated theological mind, which is not totally congruent with many of the inherited formularies of the last few centuries” – specially when coupled with his observation that “this reality must soon come home to roost in one way or another.” That is why Holmes so opposed the option to keep the 1928 Book of Common Prayer as an option. He eagerly looked forward to the enforced changes that the enforced use of the 1979 book would bring and the opportunity to “re-write our theology books in the light of our liturgy.” The 1979 book is a book of alternative services with alternative doctrinal formulations encouraged, aided and abetted. Try reading the 1979 Outline of Faith as a catechism in conjunction with the texts in the book and see how far you get in received Trinitarian faith.
Holmes not only understood but rejoiced in the fact that the 1979 book emphasizes the understanding of the Christian experience as “a post-critical apprehension of symbolic reality and life in the community.” That community would not be as one might expect, the Church as the Body of Christ through time and space and eternity, but the church of whats-happening-now as he expressed it: “a question of truth for our time”.
Do procure for yourself a copy of this difficult to find book and read this most enlightening essay on the real goals of the liturgical movement and prayer book revision in the hads of the Standing Liturgical Commission. It is most revealing of an anthropocentric “theology” re-written along the lines of Karl Rahner, Ricouer’s ‘second naivete’ and more expressive of Husserrd, Heidegger, Otto, and process theology than of any received theological understanding of the Christian Faith in any prior book in America or the CoE. It was deliberately done, as Holmes makes crystal clear-“there is a clear theological change”, and he further states “the S(tanding) L(iturgical) C(ommision) was probably strategically wise in not affirming this too loudly, but the members knew that the S(ociety) for the P(reservation) of the B(ook) of C(ommon) P(rayer) was correct.”
One has only to read subsequent productions of the SLC to see the trend accelerated and given its head. Prayer Book studies 30 is an exemplar.
My problem is that a phrase such as “respect the dignity of every human being” though noble-sounding, has no connection to scripture. So there is nothing to keep the church on-track in its interpretation of that phrase, as we have seen.
I think the Baptismal Covenant is Satanic mischief. The Trojan Horse simile is spot-on.