"Most agreeable with the institution of Christ": infant Baptism and classical Anglicanism's pastoral wisdom

The baptism service in the Book of Common Prayer [1662] is focused on the child, not the beliefs of the parents.  This should still be the focus of Kingdom parish ministry ...

The words are from a recent Church Times article by Alan Bartlett setting forth an understanding of the Occasional Offices shaped by the pastoral wisdom of classical Anglicanism (and see Bartlett's book for further insights).  Such a welcome affirmation of the 1662 Baptismal rite (and, we might also say, the PECUSA 1928 and Canadian 1962 rites) brings us to recognise the distinct lack of pastoral wisdom in many contemporary Anglican Baptismal rites: the assumption (contrary to both historic experience and existing practice in the vast majority of parishes) that adult baptism is the norm; that the faith of parents, rather than the grace bestowed in the Sacrament, is the determining factor in the rite; excluding liturgical recognition of godparents (a term replete with theological meaning, and also continuing to possess popular resonance), replacing it with the abstract 'sponsors'; and emphasising a generalized 'Baptismal Covenant' rather than a focus on the duty "to take care that this Child" is nurtured in the Christian Faith.

In many ways, TEC is an example of what happens when these liturgical assumptions are allowed to shape an understanding of Holy Baptism: a staggering collapse in the numbers of infant Baptisms ensues.  It is hardly surprising.  Such assumptions are at least implicitly designed to do just this, motivated by a rejection of Christendom, which, as John Hughes reminded us, leads to "a suspicion at least or outright rejection of infant baptism".  The new liturgies embody a theology quite distinct from the pastoral understanding of classical Anglicanism, the understanding which, over centuries, has resulted in - as Bartlett states - "people ... coming to these Occasional Offices with quite strong operative theologies".  He continues:

They may be inarticulate according the standards of degree-educated clergy, but this is often significant 'ordinary' theology. They tell us that christening is about becoming a member of the Church: that in christening God is promising to bless and protect their child.

The irony is that this inarticulate residue of populist Anglicanism (and its language of 'christening') is closer to the teaching of Article 27 than the barely concealed hostility to infant Baptism which motivated liturgical revision and which finds expression in practices which seek to 'fence off' Baptism. 

The Baptism of young Children is in any wise to be retained in the Church, as most agreeable with the institution of Christ.

It is because "God is the interesting thing about religion" (Underhill) that infant Baptism should not be 'fenced off': why would we keep people away from the Interesting Thing?  Why, indeed, encourage a secular order at a moment of great meaning and joy in the life of a family, rather than, through the Sacrament of Baptism, have it caught up in Christ? As Bartlett puts it regarding the Occasional Offices:

They are sacramental moments when, in the often chaotic mess of life, God becomes actively and visibly present through welcome, relationship, compassion, action, some words, and the formal sacrament.

It is, as Hooker declares, "the faith of the Church of God undertaking the motherly care of our souls" which opens and enables this encounter, not, he insists, "the virtue of our fathers nor the faith of any other" (LEP V.64.5). 

The liturgical, theological, and pastoral turn against infant Baptism within contemporary Anglicanism is to cut ourselves off from the liturgical, theological, and pastoral wisdom of classical Anglicanism.  In doing so, we disorder the Church's proclamation.  This was the concern Hooker articulated in his critique of those Disciplinarian clergy in the Elizabethan Church who desired to administer the Sacrament of Baptism only to "they whose parents at the least one of them are by the soundness of their religion and by their virtuous demeanour known to be men of God", choosing to "repel children ... if their parents be mispersuaded in religion":

Thus whereas God hath appointed them ministers of holy things, they make themselves inquisitors of men's persons a great deal further than need is.  They should consider that God hath ordained baptism in favour of mankind.  To restrain favours is an odious thing, to enlarge them acceptable both to God and man (V.64.5).