The Mystery of Baptism in the Anglican Tradition. Kenneth Stevenson
through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
For example, Langley Chapel in Shropshire was probably built in 1564 but with some additions later. It is a simple, small building erected for the residents of the nearby Langley Hall, which has since been pulled down. The interior of the church expresses the ideals of the Puritan approach to worship, grounded in simplicity. There are pews and benches for the congregation, and two pulpits, one of them movable. At the east end there is a communion table round which the congregation will have gathered on those Sundays when the sacrament was celebrated. But there is no evidence of any font. I would hazard a guess that if I had been born at Langley Hall at the time, I would have been baptized in the church in a basin set up on a table for that purpose. Such a practice was frowned upon, no less than moving the old fonts from their position near the door, by the bishops from the beginning of the reign of Queen Elizabeth onwards.2 Proof enough that it was common practice!
Then there is the church of St Mary, Acton Burnell, which was built about 1270–80 by Richard Burnell, who was Bishop of Bath and Wells and Lord Chancellor to King Edward I. He enjoyed royal favour and had the right ‘to crenellate’ his family house next to the church, i.e. to turn it into a castle. Everything in this church is of the best. Near the entrance to the church there is an octagonal font. Fonts sometimes had eight sides, not just for geometrical unity but to symbolize the eighth day of the week as the day of the new creation and baptism as the expression of that new birth. On the corner which faces outwards to the rest of the church, there is some stiff foliage carved into the stonework. This is no mistake but a gently eye-catching trick to point to that eighth day. It is easy to imagine the Prayer Book rite celebrated around this font in the context of the offices of Morning and Evening Prayer. Here is the Reformed but still Catholic Church of England using its medieval architectural inheritance and attempting to make the baptism service more public, as the title of the service in the Prayer Book suggests.
Then there is, by contrast, the Church of the Holy Trinity at Minsterley, an unusual building which was completed in 1689. The font was originally placed opposite the south door. Its proportions are small by medieval standards and it stands lower than many of its medieval counterparts. One could imagine an adult standing over such a font and being baptized with the form for those ‘of riper years’ which was only introduced to the Prayer Book in 1662.3
Such is the way that three churches in different parts of Shropshire might have been used for the sacrament of baptism. But they might have been used differently. The Langley baptism could have taken place at home, again around a basin. At Acton Burnell, there could have been a parson in the reign of Elizabeth I who was a devout follower of the Puritans. He therefore would not have used the font at the back of the church but would have set up a basin at the head of the nave. Perhaps he would have left out those parts of the service of which he disapproved, for example, the promises by the godparents and the sign of the cross. As to confirmation, this took place when the Bishop performed his Visitation, because there was no explicit direction that confirmation should be held in church. It is conceivable that when the faithful of Minsterley were confirmed by the Bishop of Hereford, the service happened outside. Moreover it was even known for churches to have two fonts, one in the old position and another in a more accessible place, as in Herefordshire at Sutton St Michael during the time of the Commonwealth.4
In the pages that follow, we shall be looking at the writings of nine theologians from the end of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I through to the time of Charles II, each of whom has important things to say about how baptism is celebrated liturgically, about how theology relates to worship. It is a short time span but it is rich in debate and controversy that have a direct bearing on many of the issues facing the Churches today. For each one of them what we believe and exactly what we do – and don’t do – about it at the font matter a great deal. Michael Ignatieff’s ‘sense of fracture’ and ‘sense of imprisonment’ do indeed send the historian back to these archives, these memoirs. Unfortunately the tape-recorded voices are not available, but the material is richly textured and rewarding to ponder. The historian does so knowing full well that the past certainly does not speak with one voice, and we shall delve into this material realizing that our need for belonging in the Christian Church is one that is never ultimately satisfied.
Although they cover between them a great deal of ground, each has a particular insight that leaps to the enquiring twentieth-century eye. ‘Is baptism inward or outward?’ asks William Perkins. ‘How is baptism a means of sharing in the life of God?’ asks Richard Hooker. Baptism is the opening of heaven above Christ, as Lancelot Andrewes preached at Whitsun in 1615. God’s foreknowledge of us is the dominant theme in the baptism poems of George Herbert. ‘What happens to the unbaptized?’ asks John Bramhall. Richard Baxter sees us all as disciples of Christ at the font. Jeremy Taylor spreads baptism through human experience as a pattern of ‘holy living’. Our profession of Christian faith is always counter-balanced by God’s redemption in our hearts and lives, as Simon Patrick eloquently testifies. And Herbert Thorndike sees the covenant of grace between God and humanity begun sacramentally at the font and continued at the only sacrament which bears fruitful iteration, the Holy Communion.
This is the collective memory of what came to be called Anglicanism that we shall tap. It is made up of a combination of ingredients, in which context plays a significant role, through an ordered liturgy which has its own balance of change and stability. And the criteria for that continuity and change are invariably a very Anglican combination of scripture, tradition and reason, always in tension when addressing specific concerns, and always trusted to work towards a solution. It is a rich, varied, and vivacious read, and one in which we may be able to find some explanations of how we in the late twentieth century have arrived at where we are now. It may also beckon us not only to nurture our sense of tradition, but to be sustained by it, to the point of looking yet more profoundly at how we can build a more secure future.
2
Setting the Scene
I once attended an ecumenical conference at theological college at which one of the speakers was Bishop Alan Clark, who was the first Roman Catholic Co-Chairman of the Anglican Roman Catholic International Commission. The ‘Agreed Statement’ on the Eucharist had just been first issued.1 He was about to address us on that seemingly intractable problem, eucharistie dialogue between Anglicans and Roman Catholics.
Earlier that morning he had walked across from the theological college into Salisbury Cathedral to say his prayers. He sat still for a while and looked around and wondered at the beauty and the sense of continuity and discontinuity in the building. The medieval Gothic architecture remained. But there were important changes, which expressed the way in which the Church of England had absorbed aspects of the Reformation in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. There had been change and development since then as well. And he could enjoy the way in which the two sister Churches, Roman and Anglican, were drawing closer together. We were being encouraged by a new atmosphere of dialogue and cooperation. In company with other Churches also we were responding to what the Spirit was saying to the Churches in our own age.
One particular expression in his talk to us stuck in my mind. He referred to the Reformation as ‘an explosion of ideas’. Explosion indeed it was. And for many people, a necessary explosion. It was an explosion that for many sought to change the outward face of the Western Church without losing its inner heart.
Among the issues debated was the place of baptism. After all, how we understand this sacrament of entry into the Church – and how we perform it liturgically – are bound to be questions that affect the kind of Christian community that we are. A particular Anglican characteristic has tended to explore the relationship between sacraments as they are experienced in human lives and as they are celebrated as objective actions of the Church. This has often nowadays been called ‘thick description’ by anthropologists.
At the Reformation, these issues were indeed hotly debated all over Europe. They were debated not only for what they were said to teach – theology – but also for the way in which they were done – in worship. Thus, they adjusted the theology and liturgy of baptism. It was quite an operation to work out criteria for doing