'They make themselves inquisitors': the Church of Ireland General Synod and baptising children of unmarried parents

There has been a significant revision of the historical understanding of Richard Hooker in recent decades.  The 19th century conception of Hooker as the architect of an 'Anglican via media' has been replaced by a much more historically compelling account of Hooker the Reformed theologian. This has led to some conservative evangelical Anglicans claiming Hooker for themselves, often invoking Nigel Atkinson's Richard Hooker and the Authority of Scripture, Tradition and Reason. While Atkinson provided a somewhat unsophisticated summary of more recent Hooker research, he did aid conservative evangelical Anglicans in apparently rediscovering Hooker.

Missing, however, from this newfound conservative evangelical enthusiasm for Hooker the Reformed theologian is the context established by serious Hooker research. As Hooker scholar Torrance Kirby has brilliantly demonstrated, 'Reformed' was a deeply contested category in Hooker's Elizabethan Church of England. Likewise, Diarmaid MacCulloch's works have consistently reiterated that the Reformed tradition was much "more varied and cosmopolitan" than English Puritanism and the Westminster Confession of Faith. As those who identify as 'Reformed' in the contemporary Church of Ireland tend to have much more in common with Hooker's Puritan opponents than they do with Hooker, we can begin to understand how they radically misunderstand what it means to acknowledge Hooker as Reformed.

This failure to recognise how Hooker is to be understood as standing within diverse and cosmopolitan - rather than monolithic and monochrome - Reformed traditions partly explains how conservative evangelicals in the Church of Ireland, while seeking to lay claim to Hooker, recently voted in the Church of Ireland General Synod to reject Hooker.  At the recent meeting of the General Synod, conservative evangelicals amongst the clergy rejected a motion affirming the administration of Holy Baptism to the children of unmarried parents:

The Motion asked Synod to affirm that, in accordance with Canons, Chapter 9 of the Constitution of the Church of Ireland, irrespective of the marital status of the parents of an infant, a minister must not refuse or, save for the purpose of preparing or instructing the parents or godparents, delay to baptise any child within his or her cure who is brought to be baptised, provided that due notice has been given and the provisions relating to sponsors and godparents are observed.

The motion was affirming a Hookerian approach to the administration of Holy Baptism. Hooker is absolutely explicit that denying Holy Baptism to infants on the grounds that clergy do not approve of the parents' marital status or moral standing is wrong:

A wrong conceipt that none may receave the sacrament of baptisme but they whose parentes at the least the one of them are by the soundnes of theire religion and by theire vertuous demenor knowne to be men of God, hath caused some to repell children whosoever bringe them if theire parentes be misperswaded in religion ... some likewise for that cause to withhold baptisme, unlesse the father, albeit no such exception can justlie be taken against him, doe notwithstandinge make profession of his faith, and avoutch the childe to be his owne (LEP V.64.5).

Hooker's condemnation of such actions by clergy is, to say the very least, robust:

Thus whereas God hath appointed them ministers of holie thinges, they make them selves inquisitors of mens persons a greate deale farther thaen neede is. They should consider that God hath ordeined baptisme in favor of mankind. To restraine favors is an odious thinge, to enlarge them acceptable both to God and man (V.64.5).

Inquisitors odiously restraining the grace and goodness of God: this is a Hookerian description of those who refuse to administer Holy Baptism to the children of unmarried parents.

In the Synod debate on the motion, it was suggested by some opponents that the motion failed to trust the clergy. This, however, is rather the point: a constituency of clergy in the contemporary Church of Ireland have demonstrated that they cannot be trusted to administer Holy Baptism according to the rites of the Church of Ireland and according to its Canons.  

It was a specific example of clergy refusal to administer Holy Baptism to the child of an unmarried mother, raised at General Synod in 2023, which led to the motion. That such refusals are routine in some conservative evangelical parishes is very well known, despite the clear provisions of the Canons. There are only two canonical reasons for delaying and refusing the Baptism of a child. Firstly, it is canonical to reasonably delay Baptism in order to facilitate instructing the parents or godparents on the "responsibilities [that] rest on them ... in the service of Holy Baptism". It would be canonical to refuse Baptism if parents state their refusal to accept such responsibilities. These responsibilities are defined in Holy Baptism Two:

will you accept the responsibilities placed upon you in bringing [name] for baptism and answer on their behalf? By your own prayers and example, but your teaching and love, will you encourage them in them in the life and faith of the Christian community? ... Will you care for them, and help them to take their place within the life and worship of Christ's Church?

There is no sense in which this instruction and these responsibilities justify clergy submitting parents to moral scrutiny and passing judgment upon them. If clerical moral scrutiny and judgment was permitted as part of the instruction of parents for the Baptism of their child, we would be in a position of requiring a significant list of issues to be examined, far beyond marital status (assuming that no very odd claim is being made that the married state has a unique salvific significance). Such examination would turn Baptismal preparation into auricular confession, contravening the teaching summarised in the Preface of 1878:

nor is it anywhere in our Formularies taught or implied that confession to, or absolution by, a Priest are any conditions of God's pardon.

This understanding of clerical power and authority is (thankfully) entirely outside the teaching, practice, and traditions of the Church of Ireland. 

Secondly, it is canonical to delay and eventually refuse Baptism of a child if sponsors and godparents are not "baptised Christians and persons of discreet age", with "at least two" members of or in communion with the Church of Ireland.

These, and these only, are the canonical grounds for delaying or refusing to administer Holy Baptism to a child in the Church of Ireland.

That there are clergy in the Church of Ireland refusing to abide by the Canons with regards to Holy Baptism is contrary to the promise given by all clergy at ordination and institution to "submit to the authority of the Church of Ireland, and to the Laws and Tribunals thereof". 

Also well known in the Church of Ireland is that some clergy, contrary to the explicit provisions of the Book of Common Prayer 2004, encourage the use of 'Thanksgiving after the Birth of a Child' as an alternative to Holy Baptism, particularly for those parents deemed unsuitable for their child to receive the Sacrament. This is despite the declaration in BCP 2004 that the Thanksgiving rite "is not in any way a substitute for the sacrament of baptism".

In addition to this, it is similarly well-known that, amongst a cadre of conservative and charismatic evangelical clergy in the Church of Ireland, there are those who have stated their opposition to infant Baptism and there have been reported cases of some 're-baptising' adults who received the Sacrament as infants. This is despite the clear teaching of the Articles of Religion that infant Baptism is "most agreeable with the institution of Christ", and the teaching of the Prayer Book that it accords with Dominical teaching:

Doubt ye not therefore, but earnestly believe, that he will likewise favourably receive this present Infant; that he will embrace him with the arms of his mercy; that he will give unto him the blessing of eternal life, and make him partaker of his everlasting kingdom. Wherefore we being thus persuaded of the good will of our heavenly Father towards this Infant, declared by his Son Jesus Christ; and nothing doubting but that he favourably alloweth this charitable work of ours in bringing this Infant to his holy Baptism ...

If the motion before General Synod implied that clergy could not be trusted it is because certain clergy indeed cannot be trusted to administer Holy Baptism according to the teaching and practice of the Book of Common Prayer and the Canons of the Church of Ireland.

Some might appeal to the Gorham Judgment in defence of the uncanonical restrictions they place on the administration of Holy Baptism. It is the case that the Gorham Judgment was reaffirmed in the Preface to the 1878 revision of the Prayer Book:

In the Formularies relating to Baptism we have made no substantial change, though some have desired to alter or omit certain expressions touching which diversities of opinion have prevailed among faithful members of our Church. At the same time, we desire fully to recognize the liberty of expounding these Formularies hitherto allowed by the general practice of the Church.

Here a wise doctrinal latitude - with precedent in the Anglican tradition (as seen, for example, in the teaching of Bishop Davenant) - was permitted in interpreting the nature of the relationship between grace and the Sacrament of Baptism. Seeking to precisely define that relationship in a manner which would undermine the peace of the Church, provoking debate and controversy between "faithful members of our Church", was rightly deemed foolish and unnecessary, akin to the conflict and disorder promoted by those who, in the early 17th century, desired to impose on the Churches of Ireland and England a precise definition of the mystery of election. 

Such wise doctrinal latitude, however, was in the context of a Prayer Book Baptism rite administered graciously and generously to all infants in the parish. Indeed, this is the very point of the Gorham Judgment. Without it, the Judgment is nonsensical. The Judgment's doctrinal latitude, in understanding what is meant when the priest declares in the Prayer Book rite "Seeing now ... that this Child is regenerate", was explicitly in the context of the traditional Anglican generous pastoral practice regarding Baptism. The entire case presupposed this practice. Hence the Judgment compares the practice of the administration of the Sacrament of Holy Baptism with that of the Burial of the Dead.  The Burial Office - including the prayers assuming the departed's salvation - were read over all for whom the the United Church of England and Ireland had pastoral responsibility:

So far as our knowledge or powers of conception extend, there are, and must be, at least some persons not excommunicated from the Church, who, having lived in sin, die impenitent nay, some who perish and die in the actual commission of flagrant crimes.

The assumption of the Judgment is clear.  The context for the same "charitable interpretation" - to use the phrase of the Judgment - of the Burial rite also applies to Holy Baptism: both are administered to all those for whom the Church has pastoral responsibility.  

Those, therefore, who voted against the General Synod motion were not in any manner defending the Gorham Judgment. They were, in fact, rejecting key parts of its most basic assumptions, the very practices on which the Judgment was based. It was a case of evangelicals against the Gorham Judgment.

Rejecting Hooker. Refusing to abide by the teaching of the Prayer Book and Articles, and the provision of the Canons. Overturning the shared liturgical and pastoral practices affirmed by the Gorham Judgment. These factors highlight how those Church of Ireland clergy who arrogate to themselves the role of inquisitors, in restricting the grace and goodness of God in the Sacrament of Holy Baptism, are radical neo-Puritan innovators, overthrowing - in the words of the Ordinal - "the Doctrine and Sacraments, and the Discipline of Christ, as the Lord hath commanded, and as this Church hath received the same" (emphasis added). 

Significantly, while a very slim majority of clergy opposed the motion, a clear majority of the laity - those we might rightly describe as the "sober, peaceable, and truly conscientious" daughters and sons of the Church of Ireland - supported the motion. This is itself is a reminder of the clericalism at work amongst those who make themselves inquisitors when it comes to administering the Sacrament of Holy Baptism. It is, then, to the pastoral wisdom of the laity that we now look, along with those clergy committed to the administering of Holy Baptism "as this Church hath received the same". While the radical innovators may have had their day at Synod, we can yet be grateful for the Hookerian wisdom and grace of a majority of the laity and a substantial proportion of the clergy, a wisdom and grace which will continue to uphold the traditionally gracious, generous and canonical approach to the administration of Holy Baptism in many parishes of the Church of Ireland.

They should consider that God hath ordeined baptisme in favor of mankind. To restraine favors is an odious thinge, to enlarge them acceptable both to God and man.