Against the cultured despisers of Christening
Where I might want to lightly revise Lawrence's thesis is in her account of the historical decline in the use of the term 'christening' by English clergy. She presents this as an outworking of the Reformation, with a clear Protestant preference for 'baptism' rather than 'christening' (p.22ff). Increasingly, she notes, there is clerical reticence about the use of 'christening', leading to it becoming "almost an anti-religious word in the minds of some of the religious elite in society" by the 17th century (p.25).
There is, however, another Anglican history to be invoked here, in which clergy and official texts retained the term 'christening'. To begin at an obvious point, the Prayer Books of 1552, 1559, and 1662 all have references to 'christen' in regards to baptism. In the 1662 rite for The Ministration of Private Baptism of Children in Houses - a very widely used rite in the 17th and 18th centuries - the rubric following the questions examining if the child had been previously baptized directs:
And if the Minister shall find by the answers of such as bring the Child, that all things were done as they ought to be; then shall not he christen the Child again.
Likewise, Article 27 also uses the term:
Baptism is not only a sign of profession, and mark of difference, whereby Christian men are discerned from others that be not christened ...
Alongside Prayer Book and Articles, we can also point to the Book of Homilies. The Homily for Repairing and Keeping Clean of Churches states:
God's house, the church, is well adorned, with places convenient to sit in, with the pulpit for the preacher, with the Lord's table for the ministration of his holy supper, with the font to christen in.
In other words, the Formularies - Prayer Book, Articles, Homilies - all retained the use of 'christen' with reference to the Sacrament of Baptism. In this they reflected the usage of Cranmer himself. In his Answer to Gardiner, Cranmer freely uses 'christening' alongside the clearly Protestant term 'Lord's Supper':
Therefore as water in the font or vessel hath not the reason and nature of a sacrament, but when it is put to the use of christening, and then it is changed into the proper nature and kind of a sacrament, to signify the wonderful change which Almighty God by his omnipotency worketh really in them that be baptized therewith, such is the change of the bread and wine in the Lord's Supper.
Mindful of such usage, it should perhaps not then be surprising that it was also reflected in the Canons. Canon 68 of the 1604 English Canons and canon 34 of the 1634 Irish Canons both declared:
No Minister shall refuse or delay to Christen any Child according to the Form of the Book of Common Prayer ...
Against this background, continued clerical use of 'christening' should be expected and it is to be found. Laud, for example, invariably uses the term when recording administering the rite:
the Lady Duchess of Buckingham was delivered of her son the Lord Francis Williers, whom I christened - 21st April 1629;
I had the honour, as Dean of Chapel, my Lord's Grace of Canterbury being infirm, to christen Prince
Charles at St. James's - 27th June 1630;
Sunday in the afternoon I christened king Charles's second son, James Duke of York, at St. James's - 24th November 1633.
To move to a later cleric ministering in a rather different context, Parson Woodforde's diaries consistently use 'christening' terminology:
I christened two children (Twins) of Robin Francis’s this afternoon - 27th March 1765;
I read Prayers, Preached, Churched a Woman, and christened two children by name Christopher and John this afternoon at Weston Church - 10th November 1776;
I read Prayers, Preached and christened a child by name George this afternoon at Weston Church - 21st May 1780.
An example of a different use of the term is also to be seen in Cosin's Devout Confessions, a devotional work for preparation for reception of the Holy Communion:
at the day of my Christening I was so happily and holily vowed and dedicated unto my God, to be His child, and to live in His continual service.
In other words, there is clear evidence of a continued use - alongside 'baptism' - of 'christening' by Anglican clergy throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, a practice vindicated and encouraged by the use of the terminology in Formularies and Canons. The persistence of the practice is also indicated in the Canons adopted by the Church of Ireland at disestablisment, printed in the 1878 revision of the BCP:
No Minister, due notice having been given to him thereof, shall refuse or delay to christen, according to the form in the Book of Common Prayer, any child that is brought to the church to him on Sundays or
Holy-days to be christened, either of whose parents is resident within his Cure.
What this suggests is that the clerical animus against 'christening' has much more recent roots. The extent of this animus is illustrated by Lawrence. She quotes one cleric describing it as "a disgusting word!". She continues:
It seems that the word christening captures an aspect of modern ministry that Church of England clergy find deeply uncomfortable, arousing feelings of guilt and conflict (p.10).
To what extent these attitudes contribute to or have been formed by the "self-marginalization" of Anglicanism described by Pattison (and it is difficult not to think Sam Brewitt-Taylor's narrative in Christian Radicalism in the Church of England is crucial here) is a matter for further reflection. Whatever the case, it is clear that the rejection of 'christening' is a rejection of a popular piety rooted in both the Formularies and the historic pastoral practice of Anglicanism. As Lawrence states:
Such sectarianism - inherently marginalising - contradicts Anglicanism's historic vocation in national churches, ordering and sanctifying common life towards participation in the Triune God, in which 'christening' was a key and defining practice. Renewing this vocation, then, is intimately caught up with a renewal of christening.
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