My wife was confirmed as an Anglican today by our bishop in bit of an odd service at St Paul's Cathedral.
So why did she bother? It's a necessary prerequisite for her entering the 'Year of Discernment' which is the year-long program that the Melbourne Diocese runs for people who are considering becoming candidates for ordination. Dovetailing neatly with yesterday's post, my wife is exploring the possibility of becoming a distinctive deacon as part of our plan to continue working alongside each other in Anglican ministry.
It was actually a pretty good little service. Like lots of the liturgy, the words are really great and the bits the candidate has to say are things that any follower of Jesus would want to say. We also read through Mark 1:40-45 and talked about it together. And it was really great to share the service with the guy in the picture who was being officially 'received' into the Anglican Communion so that he can take up a formal leadership post at his church and with our minister who made the trek into the Cathedral to be there with us.
Now my daughter - who was baptised as an infant - is asking about when she can get confirmed too!
Hmmm. Weird. I was received when I did the YOD because I was baptized as an adult in another denomination.
ReplyDeleteWas Cat confirmed because she was baptized in an Anglican church? Isn't their an alternate service in the APBA for adult baptism that dispenses with the need for latter confirmation?
Anyway, good news I guess.
My wife was baptised and confirmed in the same service, at St. Paul's, Bendigo- well technically on the Coles car park roof- on Easter morning, a couple of years back. It was wonderful!
ReplyDeleteWhile I was baptised as an infant in a Presbyterian Church, my family wasn't religious and no one introduced me to Christ until I was about 40. After suitable study the vicar of my main church said it was okay to start taking communion without getting baptised as an Anglican (although I had to deliver a testimonial and make a commitment to Christ first). A year later I was told it would probably a good idea if I was confirmed and while I'd planned to go skiing that weekend, I cancelled the trip and turned up to the ceremony.
ReplyDeleteI surprised to be quite moved by it. I felt the Spirit in a very Protestant, non-charismatic way when Bishop Huggins confirmed me. But what is the doctrinal place of adult confirmation and why can it only be done by a bishop when a minister/priest can administer all (other?) sacraments?
@DS - "I felt the Spirit in a very Protestant, non-charismatic way"... nice!
ReplyDeleteConfirmation is a real throwback to Christendom - although I think it still has a useful place in the church today. Basically, it was a means of letting someone who had been baptised as an infant a way of publicly declaring their faith - and a way for the broader church to hear that declaration. It still makes sense today for people who were baptised as infants - and especially if, for example, they want to get ordained as it lets the church be absolutely clear on where they stand in the faith.
It makes less sense for adults who was publicly baptised - like you and Cat. But I take it that you were not a large category of people in ye olde church of England. That is, even if people were truly converted as adults, chances are they would have been baptised as infants anyway because of i) the relatively high infant mortality rates and the lingering ritualistic mindset that believed the unbaptised were automatically condemned and ii) the fact that the CofE was a nationalised church - ie. all citizens were members of the church and therefore baptised as a right of passage at birth. The Anglican practice of confirmation today is really a hangover from those times.
Why a bishop has to do it, I'm not 100% sure. Ultimately I presume it's because the bishop is the one who holds the true 'cure of souls' for a given region, with the vicar just being his vicarious representative. So, if confirmation is an adult's public declaration of faith, it might have been considered necessary that the one with final pastoral responsibility for a believer should be there to hear the candidate's declaration.
The vicar is the 'vicarious representative' of the bishop - I like that!
ReplyDeleteWe used the AAPB first order service of baptism for our son precisely because the 2nd order one includes in the preface: "Children are baptised on the understanding that ... they will be brought to the bishop to be confirmed by him, when they are of age...".
ReplyDeleteBeing completely unconvinced of the necessity of confirmation (although agreeing that it may be useful, helpful etc), and feeling that this was not a promise we could make on his behalf, I refused to have a service that implied that I would do this. We hope very much that he will wish to publicly stand and confess his faith when 'he is of an age to do so' through confirmation and/or other means.
I was baptised as a 'job lot' with my siblings when my father started along the road to ordination. I was about 8 and extremely happy to answer for myself. (Although, to be honest, getting to lead the other children out to Sunday School was more of a highlight at the time - I got a candle!)