CHAPTER 1

Conversation with History

It is a sense of fracture or a sense of imprisonment that sends historians backto the archives, the memoirs, the tape-recorded voices. Yet this relationbetween loss and the imagination is full of irony. History has less authoritythan memory, less legitimacy than tradition. History can never speak with theone voice that our need for belonging requires.

When were you baptized? I cannot remember my own baptism in the same way that Ican remember where I was when I heard that President Kennedy had beenassassinated or that Mrs Thatcher had resigned. But I have done some digginginto the family archives and have put together something of my personal history.I discovered that I was baptized on the afternoon of Saturday 17 December 1949in St Peter's Church, Musselburgh. The family used to attend that church and theRector was one of my godparents. The service was taken by Canon John Ballard,who had just seen my father through to becoming a Reader in the diocese ofEdinburgh. The church building, moreover, became a familiar sight in later yearswhen we moved further away, because it stands on what was then the main roadinto Edinburgh. I am told that my baptism was only attended by family and closefriends. There was a virtual repeat performance for my sister in the spring of1954, and according to one piece of family folklore I fell asleep towards theend of the reception afterwards because I went around emptying everyone's sherryglasses.

Then in the summer of 1958 it was arranged that my brother and I should beconfirmed along with the rest of the group of young people in the congregationat St Anne's, Dunbar. To save my brother and me a journey on a weekday eveningover a period of weeks, the Rector kindly came and prepared us both forconfirmation. I remember his kindness and his carefulness in explaining allmanner of things to do with Christian faith and worship. He was always ready toanswer questions. And he patiently put up with our interruptions.

All this led to the confirmation service on Saturday, 20 December 1958 in StAnne's by Kenneth Warner, Bishop of Edinburgh. I remember the service well,particularly because it was postponed a week at a day's notice; one of theborder clergy had died and the Bishop had to go and take the funeral. My brotherand I were given our confirmation presents – a watch each – a week in advance,to make up for the disappointment. The service left quite an impression on me.We all sat in the front pews on the north side of the central aisle, and ourfamilies and friends huddled around us and sang the hymns lustily. I recallnoting how odd it was that the Bishop sat in his chair, even for the hymns. Hewore a red and gold cope and my father acted as his Chaplain. As we came up oneby one the Rector, Edmund Ivens, called out our names. I remember the touch ofthe Bishop's hands. I remember too being told to wait after the service for theBishop to come and give us our confirmation card. The wait seemed like an age.But he eventually appeared, wearing just a cassock, and told us that the cardwas 'a record of our confirmation'. We duly went up and had a less formalcontact with him, and then we went home, with our families.

But there was one rather strange event that day. We gathered in the church inthe morning for a rehearsal, and suddenly there was a baptism. One of thecandidates had not been baptized, and now he was to be baptized surrounded byhis fellow confirmation candidates! We were the congregation as no family orfriends seemed to want to be there. I was asked to be one of the servers inorder to assist the Rector through the service, even though I did not have muchof a clue as to what was happening. But the other Reader in the parish whopresented this young lad for baptism took care to find the service for each oneof us in the Prayer Book. I remember him distinctly saying to himself in eachcase 'the baptism of those of riper years' – and adding humorously, 'nothing todo with orange and apples'. At the service, the candidate stood against thefont, and the Rector poured water over his head with a mother-of-pearl shell. Itall seemed like a routine that was being gone through in as dignified a way aspossible. But it left an impression. Finally, on the next morning, we all tookcommunion at the early Eucharist, a quiet service in the traditional style, andfrom that time onwards our Christian lives progressed and regressed with thepassage of years.

It is indeed a 'sense of fracture' as well as a mild 'sense of imprisonment' (toborrow from Ignatieff) that sends me back to the family memoirs as Ireconstruct those events from remembered conversations with those who took part.There is for me an inevitable sense of loss, for it is the past, a past that haschanged almost beyond recognition, not least over matters of liturgy. Liturgicalpractice over baptism and confirmation does still vary a great deal but I wouldhazard a guess that the scenario described above would be different now. Thechild of practising Anglican parents today would be baptized during a Sundaymorning Eucharist in St Peter's, Musselburgh. The Bishop of Edinburgh would havecome to St Anne's, Dunbar on a Sunday morning to celebrate what is oftenregarded as the richest form of Eucharist, one in which baptism and confirmationtake their full place. There would be one service, not three. And the young ladwould be baptized by the Bishop – for all to see. I expect, too, that thecandidates for confirmation would nowadays be prepared not only by the localRector but by lay people as well.

But to borrow again from Ignatieff, 'History can never speak with the one voicethat our need for belonging requires', and that is very much the theme of thepages that follow. Christian belonging is about many things. It is about thewelcome at the back of church. It is about the encouragement of family andfriends. It is about the capacity to ask God the difficult questions that are atthe time unanswerable when tragedy strikes, rather than giving up on himaltogether. Christian belonging has a special and primal place at the font, inthe rough and tumble of a community getting to grips with the Christian faiththrough its young, in the confirmation preparation, and in the regularcelebration of the Eucharist. The fragmented picture of my own passage throughthese various rites may be somewhat out of date in contemporary terms but it hasnonetheless been the way in which Christians have been nurtured for manycenturies. Indeed, the fragmented nature of Christian experience is very much agiven aspect of our lives. We can never arrange things so neatly that God isgift-wrapped, cut-priced, and easily available.

This is what makes sacraments so fascinating, particularly the two mainsacraments, baptism and Eucharist. In water and in bread and wine the Church isgiven the equipment to wash in rebirth and to feed her members. So often inhistory the Church has had to walk something of a tightrope between saying (onthe one hand) that sacraments are important, vital, gifts of God, actions of theChurch, in which certain important things happen, and (on the other hand) sayingthat they are part of a wider whole, the means for the journey of faith,patterns of divine life in which we can live and grow, events to focus on butnot to confine God within them.

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It is easy to see golden ages in the past and to approach the past with our ownparticular agendas. Looking back on what I now know of my own baptism, theevents on the day of my own confirmation – complete with a rehearsal that endedup with the baptism of a candidate of 'riper years', and the confirmationitself, followed by the communion at the Eucharist the next day – I can see akind of jumble, a collection of fragments from history. There is the oldestablished norm that goes back to the Middle Ages, whereby infants are indeedbaptized, catechized subsequently by the local priest, and confirmed by thebishop. But I can also see the signs of that scheme breaking down in thatstrange adult baptism at which all I seemed to do was lift the Rector's cope ashe stretched out his right hand to pour the baptismal water. In the Anglicandivines whom we shall be looking at later, there seemed to be no settled schemeeither. There were attempts to justify an inherited system that was in need ofadaptation. Many of them delved into the ancient past for inspiration for theirideas and even for the justification of their ideas. It was a scheme that was onthe move though the questions they faced were often different from ours. As withtoday's inheritance, often the way the liturgy is celebrated and what itcontains mirrors the issues of the time. Some old churches provide ampleevidence of this variety through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

For example, Langley Chapel in Shropshire was probably built in 1564 but withsome additions later. It is a simple, small building erected for the residentsof the nearby Langley Hall, which has since been pulled down. The interior ofthe church expresses the ideals of the Puritan approach to worship, grounded insimplicity. 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 thecongregation will have gathered on those Sundays when the sacrament wascelebrated. But there is no evidence of any font. I would hazard a guess that ifI had been born at Langley Hall at the time, I would have been baptized in thechurch in a basin set up on a table for that purpose. Such a practice wasfrowned upon, no less than moving the old fonts from their position near thedoor, by the bishops from the beginning of the reign of Queen Elizabethonwards. Proof enough that it was common practice!

Then there is the church of St Mary, Acton Burnell, which was built about 1270–80by Richard Burnell, who was Bishop of Bath and Wells and Lord Chancellor toKing Edward I. He enjoyed royal favour and had the right 'to crenellate' hisfamily house next to the church, i.e. to turn it into a castle. Everything inthis church is of the best. Near the entrance to the church there is anoctagonal font. Fonts sometimes had eight sides, not just for geometrical unitybut to symbolize the eighth day of the week as the day of the new creation andbaptism as the expression of that new birth. On the corner which faces outwardsto the rest of the church, there is some stiff foliage carved into thestonework. This is no mistake but a gently eye-catching trick to point to thateighth day. It is easy to imagine the Prayer Book rite celebrated around thisfont in the context of the offices of Morning and Evening Prayer. Here is theReformed but still Catholic Church of England using its medieval architecturalinheritance and attempting to make the baptism service more public, as the titleof the service in the Prayer Book suggests.

Then there is, by contrast, the Church of the Holy Trinity at Minsterley, anunusual building which was completed in 1689. The font was originally placedopposite the south door. Its proportions are small by medieval standards and itstands lower than many of its medieval counterparts. One could imagine an adultstanding over such a font and being baptized with the form for those 'of riperyears' which was only introduced to the Prayer Book in 1662.

Such is the way that three churches in different parts of Shropshire might havebeen used for the sacrament of baptism. But they might have been useddifferently. The Langley baptism could have taken place at home, again around abasin. At Acton Burnell, there could have been a parson in the reign ofElizabeth I who was a devout follower of the Puritans. He therefore would nothave used the font at the back of the church but would have set up a basin atthe head of the nave. Perhaps he would have left out those parts of the serviceof which he disapproved, for example, the promises by the godparents and thesign of the cross. As to confirmation, this took place when the Bishop performedhis Visitation, because there was no explicit direction that confirmation shouldbe held in church. It is conceivable that when the faithful of Minsterley wereconfirmed by the Bishop of Hereford, the service happened outside. Moreover itwas even known for churches to have two fonts, one in the old position andanother in a more accessible place, as in Herefordshire at Sutton St Michaelduring the time of the Commonwealth.

In the pages that follow, we shall be looking at the writings of ninetheologians from the end of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I through to the timeof Charles II, each of whom has important things to say about how baptism iscelebrated liturgically, about how theology relates to worship. It is a shorttime span but it is rich in debate and controversy that have a direct bearing onmany of the issues facing the Churches today. For each one of them what webelieve and exactly what we do – and don't do – about it at the font matter agreat 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 isrichly textured and rewarding to ponder. The historian does so knowing full wellthat the past certainly does not speak with one voice, and we shall delve intothis material realizing that our need for belonging in the Christian Church isone that is never ultimately satisfied.

Although they cover between them a great deal of ground, each has a particularinsight that leaps to the enquiring twentieth-century eye. 'Is baptism inward oroutward?' asks William Perkins. 'How is baptism a means of sharing in the lifeof God?' asks Richard Hooker. Baptism is the opening of heaven above Christ, asLancelot Andrewes preached at Whitsun in 1615. God's foreknowledge of us is thedominant theme in the baptism poems of George Herbert. 'What happens to theunbaptized?' asks John Bramhall. Richard Baxter sees us all as disciples ofChrist at the font. Jeremy Taylor spreads baptism through human experience as apattern of 'holy living'. Our profession of Christian faith is always counterbalancedby God's redemption in our hearts and lives, as Simon Patrickeloquently testifies. And Herbert Thorndike sees the covenant of grace betweenGod and humanity begun sacramentally at the font and continued at the onlysacrament which bears fruitful iteration, the Holy Communion.

This is the collective memory of what came to be called Anglicanism that weshall tap. It is made up of a combination of ingredients, in which context playsa significant role, through an ordered liturgy which has its own balance ofchange and stability. And the criteria for that continuity and change areinvariably a very Anglican combination of scripture, tradition and reason,always in tension when addressing specific concerns, and always trusted to worktowards a solution. It is a rich, varied, and vivacious read, and one in whichwe may be able to find some explanations of how we in the late twentieth centuryhave arrived at where we are now. It may also beckon us not only to nurture oursense of tradition, but to be sustained by it, to the point of looking yet moreprofoundly at how we can build a more secure future.

CHAPTER 2

Setting the Scene

I once attended an ecumenical conference at theological college at which one ofthe speakers was Bishop Alan Clark, who was the first Roman Catholic Co-Chairmanof the Anglican Roman Catholic International Commission. The 'Agreed Statement'on the Eucharist had just been first issued. He was about to address us on thatseemingly intractable problem, eucharistie dialogue between Anglicans and RomanCatholics.

Earlier that morning he had walked across from the theological college intoSalisbury Cathedral to say his prayers. He sat still for a while and lookedaround and wondered at the beauty and the sense of continuity and discontinuityin the building. The medieval Gothic architecture remained. But there wereimportant changes, which expressed the way in which the Church of England hadabsorbed aspects of the Reformation in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.There had been change and development since then as well. And he could enjoy theway in which the two sister Churches, Roman and Anglican, were drawing closertogether. We were being encouraged by a new atmosphere of dialogue andcooperation. In company with other Churches also we were responding to what theSpirit was saying to the Churches in our own age.

One particular expression in his talk to us stuck in my mind. He referred to theReformation as 'an explosion of ideas'. Explosion indeed it was. And for manypeople, a necessary explosion. It was an explosion that for many sought tochange the outward face of the Western Church without losing its inner heart.