churchy musings
Mar. 31st, 2019 08:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
deird1My four year old son has started taking communion.
Most of you won’t get exactly why I’m mentioning this. But some of you might understand a bit more if I put it like this: my son, who has not yet been baptised, has started taking communion.
This is unusual.
Orthodox and Catholic churches baptise teeny babies – so when churchgoers take communion, one can pretty much assume they’ve been baptised. The Baptist church, where I was raised, doesn’t baptise people until they’re older – but it also operates on the assumption that you naturally won’t start taking communion until after you’ve been baptised.
I’m at an Anglican church. The middle road. The denomination where we try not to commit to believing something, just in case we leave people out. When someone asks “Does your church believe Theology A or Theology B?” the Anglican church will usually respond with “Yeah… one of those,” and leave all further details to the imagination.
As a rule, Anglican babies are baptised when they’re teeny. But not all of them. The church is quite willing to accommodate those of us who prefer our baptisms more “credo” and less “paedo” – so our two kidlets have both had an infant dedication, and won’t be baptised until they wish to be.
But… my church, being an Anglican church, also handles communion as vaguely as it handles just about every other theological point it’s asked for an opinion on. The Orthodox give communion to infants; the Catholics have an official First Communion at seven years old. The Anglicans opted for the middle ground of “Um… when you’re ready.”
And so my son, having decided he’s ready, is lining up for communion right next to me.
I’m somewhat uncertain about this. A lot of my brain keeps on glancing at me suspiciously and muttering “…but he hasn’t been baptised, Mez…” and I don’t really have an answer for it. I can’t entirely counter the no-communion-before-baptism argument, largely because I’m not sure where that particular theology is from. It’s tradition – but I don’t quite know why, theologically speaking.
On the other hand, there is a piece of theology I’m quite certain of: that Christ said “Let the little children come unto me and forbid them not”, and that if my son asked to encounter Jesus and I said he wasn’t ready, Jesus would kick my arse. (Or at least be extremely cross and pointedly sarcastic in my direction.)
So, I am putting the thing I’m uncertain about (whether un-baptised people are technically allowed to have communion) in second place to the thing I’m very clear about (Jesus wanting kids to be allowed to come to him, dammit). And if my boy wants to take communion, I’m cheering him on.
Most of you won’t get exactly why I’m mentioning this. But some of you might understand a bit more if I put it like this: my son, who has not yet been baptised, has started taking communion.
This is unusual.
Orthodox and Catholic churches baptise teeny babies – so when churchgoers take communion, one can pretty much assume they’ve been baptised. The Baptist church, where I was raised, doesn’t baptise people until they’re older – but it also operates on the assumption that you naturally won’t start taking communion until after you’ve been baptised.
I’m at an Anglican church. The middle road. The denomination where we try not to commit to believing something, just in case we leave people out. When someone asks “Does your church believe Theology A or Theology B?” the Anglican church will usually respond with “Yeah… one of those,” and leave all further details to the imagination.
As a rule, Anglican babies are baptised when they’re teeny. But not all of them. The church is quite willing to accommodate those of us who prefer our baptisms more “credo” and less “paedo” – so our two kidlets have both had an infant dedication, and won’t be baptised until they wish to be.
But… my church, being an Anglican church, also handles communion as vaguely as it handles just about every other theological point it’s asked for an opinion on. The Orthodox give communion to infants; the Catholics have an official First Communion at seven years old. The Anglicans opted for the middle ground of “Um… when you’re ready.”
And so my son, having decided he’s ready, is lining up for communion right next to me.
I’m somewhat uncertain about this. A lot of my brain keeps on glancing at me suspiciously and muttering “…but he hasn’t been baptised, Mez…” and I don’t really have an answer for it. I can’t entirely counter the no-communion-before-baptism argument, largely because I’m not sure where that particular theology is from. It’s tradition – but I don’t quite know why, theologically speaking.
On the other hand, there is a piece of theology I’m quite certain of: that Christ said “Let the little children come unto me and forbid them not”, and that if my son asked to encounter Jesus and I said he wasn’t ready, Jesus would kick my arse. (Or at least be extremely cross and pointedly sarcastic in my direction.)
So, I am putting the thing I’m uncertain about (whether un-baptised people are technically allowed to have communion) in second place to the thing I’m very clear about (Jesus wanting kids to be allowed to come to him, dammit). And if my boy wants to take communion, I’m cheering him on.
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Date: 2019-03-31 10:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-03-31 10:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-04-01 06:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-04-05 01:28 am (UTC)Actually, now that I think about it, most of them just take the bread and don't take the wine until they're confirmed, but I don't know if that's something that's actually taught at my church or if it's just a tradition there. I was in the confirmation class for adults (having come from a different tradition) so I don't know what they teach in the confirmation class for kids.
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Date: 2019-04-05 05:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-03-31 01:00 pm (UTC)so basically I'd say that if they're old enough to understand communion, they're probably old enough to be baptised
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Date: 2019-04-01 09:10 am (UTC)I agree, for the most part. :)
On the other hand, I think you grow with your understanding as you participate in the faith. I certainly don't understand baptism or communion nearly as well as I should – and yet, twenty years ago, when I understood them even less, I was still able to encounter God through them both.
I'm pretty sure my son has a quite limited understanding of communion. But he wants to be part of it, and I think God will use that, and increase his understanding as he goes.
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Date: 2019-03-31 02:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-04-01 09:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-03-31 02:19 pm (UTC)Raised Catholic -- the Catholics consider it blasphemy for anyone to take communion without going through the sacraments of Baptism and confession first, and then first communion. There's a huge ceremony and everything for "First Communion" -- you even dress up like a bride (women), with a veil, a white dress, the whole get-up.
(Not Catholic now.)
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Date: 2019-03-31 04:38 pm (UTC)In NY you probably have lots of Congregationalists, Quakers, and Unitarians too, if you're looking for liberal Protestants to try out.
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Date: 2019-03-31 10:25 pm (UTC)There are differences although subtle between the two
Episcopal is more liberal than Anglican.
I've either been to or studied to some degree every Christian Demonmination -- Anglican, Episcopalian, Quaker, Christian Scientist, etc.
At one point I had four different Bibles.
The difference between the Protestant religions aren't as huge as they like to think. But, the Lutheran, Episcopalian, Anglican, and Catholic tend to be more traditional in their rituals, and base everything around the mass and communion. While the Presbyterian, Congregationalist, Methodist, Quaker, Unitarian (which is a congregationalist set-up), all focus on the sermon and don't have communion. Christian Scientist, Jehova Witness, Mormon all follow their own versions of the Bible and often have separate ones. Russian and Eastern Orthodox have separate holidays and tend to be more traditional in their rituals -- and more ornate than Catholic and Anglican.
There's two branches of the Lutheran -- one that is REALLY conservative, one that isn't.
I could on.
But I wouldn't call Anglican and Episcopalian the same -- there are differences between the two and the Episcopals do not follow the dictates of the Anglican church.
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Date: 2019-03-31 11:03 pm (UTC)Sorry I assumed you weren't familiar at all with Protestant churches based on that! There's such a range of how much people know about Christianity as it actually happens these days. (I have thirty-three different Bibles and a collection of books of worship/hymnals going back to the mid-19th century, it's a problem.)
In the US, the ELCA-Lutherans (the less-conservative one) are in "full communion" with the Presbyterian, Reformed, UCC, Episcopal, Moravian, and United Methodist churches, which means they've mutually agreed that any doctrinal or cultural differences, while not insignificant, aren't essential, and they acknowledge each other's sacraments and ordinations as entirely valid (so a UMC pastor can be called to an ELCA church, and vice versa.) A lot of the others have similiar arrangements between themselves (and working on adding more to the lists). So they really don't think the differences between themselves are that huge these days!
It's actually kind of an interesting process to watch, the last fifty years or so, as the many 'high-church'-ish protestant groups in the US are slowly and carefully sort of coming back together, and you'll often find that what denomination is on the door doesn't really tell you much about what's inside; it's all very fluid between the churches right now. (But UU, UCC, and Quakers all still tend to be at least somewhat progressive; with the others it's really a crapshoot regardless of what the official higher-ups say - two UMC churches in the same town may teach very different theology and politics.)
(When my mom was a kid, there were something like 15 large Lutheran denominations in the US, and when I started Sunday school, there were at least half a dozen. Now there's three - there are actually two conservative ones - wait, no, there are four, apparently the new one formally started up since I last checked: ELCA, the less-conservative-but-still-no-UU one; LCMS, the conservative one; WELS, who think LCMS are too liberal; and NALC, who think LCMS are too strict but want to still be able to hate the gays. WELS and LCMS keep making noises about joining together but then get in a fight again. NALC get the cold shoulder from everybody because fuck them.)
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Date: 2019-03-31 11:27 pm (UTC)(I have MAJOR issues with organized religion. So, I try not to discuss it too much. ;-) That and politics, tends to get me into trouble.)
Coming from the Catholic faith, and having played around with Episcopal and Lutheran (the less conservative branch, although I've seen both), and Presbyterian (which annoyed me -- it was most likely the church), I'd say that Congregationalist is odd.
The congregation picks the minister -- ministers audition for a panel. The panel listens to their sermons and interviews them. Then they present their final selection to the congregation -- and invite the selected minister to preach a few sermons. Then the members of the congregation vote -- and if selected -- they hire that minister, and pay to house them, move them, etc.
In UU faith -- they don't really follow one bible or set of teachings. They follow various ones -- everything from Buddhism to well the Koran, Torah, St James Bible, Wisdom stories, etc. While they are historically Christian, over time they've sort of pulled away from it or to it, depending on who the minister is and the congregation. It used to be Unitarian up until a certain point, then they merged with the Universalists. The difference? As far as I can figured? The Unitarians broke with the Catholics roughly around the time of St. Augustine -- because they thought the Trinity was illogical and mad no sense. (I can't say I blame them, it doesn't make a lot sense to me either.) The Universalists broke away because the concept of a heaven and a hell and a purgatory was nonsensical to them. They believe everything rejoins the source or goes to heaven, to the degree they believe in such a thing. But most UU's don't really believe in much beyond a source or God, after that, they tend to be rather agnostic in their beliefs. Although it varies -- in my church, I have disillusioned Jews, disillusioned Catholics, Buddhists, former Protestants, and a lot of humanists. Also UU tends to be more accepting of transgender and LGBTQA, which is about 50% of the makeup of the church at the moment. But again, not all UUs are the same -- because congregationalist churches vary greatly from each other.
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Date: 2019-04-01 06:39 am (UTC)Certainly the focus is on the sermon rather than communion (which is a pain if you have a guest minister whose style does not mesh with yours; has a tendency to shout into the microphone; and has also managed to choose a slate of hymns none of which anybody knows the tunes to. For a hypothetical example from yesterday.)
(I wouldn't class Orthodox churches in among Protestant churches though! but presume that was more for the sake of not-Catholic completism. :-) CS/JW/Mormon I wouldn't even know what, if anything specific, they split off from.)
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Date: 2019-04-01 09:18 am (UTC)That tends to drive me mad!
My old church was the same - but I much prefer, these days, going to services where the communion is the high point.
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Date: 2019-04-01 06:15 pm (UTC)I have complicated yet mild feelings about church services these days that are taking me a while to resolve.
But I do like the hymns. When I know them.
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Date: 2019-04-05 01:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-04-01 05:03 pm (UTC)Eh, I meant to separate Russian Orthodox and Eastern Orthodox from all of them -- they are in a category all their own. ;-)
As are the Seven Day Adventists, Christian Scientists, Mormons, and Jehova Witnesses who sort of follow their own thing. All of these don't have the same religious holidays as the others do. Nor the same practices.
The Protestant are a varied bunch. One group celebrates communion, one doesn't at all, and one sort of does a play-acting version of it (crackers and grape juice). The big difference between the Catholic's and everyone else in regards to Communion -- is the Catholic religion tends to see the communion wafer and wine as the actual body and blood of Christ and has a lengthy ceremony where it is transformed during the Mass. The whole focus of the Catholic Mass is the communion, the rest isn't really that important. People go to Catholic Mass for the Sacrament of Holy Communion. Which is why it's blasphemous for someone who is not a confirmed Catholic to partake of the sacrament. All the other faiths tend to run the spectrum -- from the sacrament view -- to no communion at all. UU's don't do communion -- they don't believe in the Trinity, or the sacrament. Russian Orthodox, Eastern Orthodox, Episcopal, Anglican, Lutheran -- all have some version of it, but they don't read it quite as literally a sacrament as the Catholic faith does. And the Presbyterian does the grape juice and crackers bit.
In ritual -- I find the Catholic, Episcopal, Anglican, Russian and Eastern Orthodox to be the most similar...although the latter two do not celebrate the holidays the same...among other things.
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Date: 2019-04-01 09:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-03-31 10:14 pm (UTC)(Also, sorry, it's REALLY LONG because I like this kind of stuff and have STRONG FEELINGS about it.)
The passages on which the practice of holy communion (the Lord’s Supper) rests are “the Last Supper” (Mt. 26:17–30, Mk. 14:12–26, Lk. 22:7–39 and Jn. 13:1–17:26) and Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor 11: 17).
The description of the last supper is pretty much Jesus breaking bread and drinking wine and saying “this is my body, this is my blood, do this in remembrance of me”. It’s the origin of communion – the Lord’s Supper – and it was undertaken at a shared meal with Jesus and his closest followers.
In the early church (a small scattered group of believers generally meeting at people’s houses to discuss, argue, and debate each other, to reaffirm their reliance on God, and to encourage each other until they waited for Jesus to come again – which they anticipated in a matter of years, maybe a decade or two) this became part of what they did together – “breaking bread” or eating a meal with each other. They came from all walks of life, of different social strata and with different degrees of religious practice (maybe think of strict orthodox Jews eating with Jews who might keep kosher if they have to, but not otherwise worry about it), and later – once Paul and Peter confirmed that God had also called non-Jews to the Messiah – believers of different cultural backgrounds with different laws about hospitality, allowed foods, and who you could ‘be brethren with’.
But whatever they did, wherever they were from, they all ate bread and they all drank wine (in the world and time of the Roman empire; unless they were like John the Baptist, eating locusts and honey, and drinking only water (which…we’re not going there right now). So “the Lord’s Supper” was something they could do together, matching Jesus’ instruction to “do this in remembrance of me”.
Yay!
By the time Paul starts writing letters to the various little churches in cities all around the eastern Mediterranean, though, issues were cropping up. Paul’s letters tend to address these issues – sometimes directly “I had heard that you were doing X, but I think the best practice for you would be Y” – and sometimes only alluded to by a phrase or series of phrases that are kind of a setup/fliparound of common beliefs that went against helpful understanding of both the good news about God, the nature of the Messiah (Jesus), and a ‘best practice’ way of life for the believers as time went on and they realised, “hey, doesn’t look like Jesus is coming back this decade, I think we’re in for a longer haul”.
The issue that is generally agreed to be addressed here is that believers would meet at someone’s house to eat a meal and be in community with each other. Only problem was that people worked different jobs at different times, some were more prosperous than others and could afford better food, and some had kind of questionable attitudes (like someone who turns up to all the potlucks but never brings a dish, and they can actually afford to cook or prep or buy something).
So Paul tells the believers in Corinth:
1. Eat together. Break bread together. Drink wine together. Do it collectively, not individually – we are a community of Christ, not little individuals running around with common beliefs.
2. Do it meaningfully. This isn’t just any meal that you’re eating, it’s a conscious willingness to “take salt” with each other in spite of your differences and class issues and race/cultural differences. Those aren’t the key to who you are anymore: your common belief that God has come down in the person of Jesus of Nazareth is what’s important now: that He has made it possible for you and He to be in communion with each other, as well as for you and your fellow humanity to be in commmunion with each other. That matters. Behave like that.
In the modern church structure, holy communion has been made to fit these two points in very specific ways
1. We do “communion” in the setting of the church community which is where believers generally meet together. It’s very specifically ‘bread/wafer’ and ‘wine/grapejuice’ and has been made really formal which I have Feelings about (because, let’s be honest, the original reason for the Lord’s Supper to be practised was to engender community through food, which eating a teeny bit of bread-like thing and drinking a sip of wine/substitute doesn’t do at all), but that’s neither here nor there.
I suspect there’s an element of developed classism to it (which is ironic given the point of believers breaking bread together was to break down the classism of the classical world) – so both rich and poor could take communion as formally and simply as possible and the rich didn’t have poor ‘freeloaders’ at their table, trying to eat their roast beef in a shared meal…
2. We do it “meaningfully”, which, in the formal context of church means declaring one’s own personal faith and being baptised into the church community.
This is why churches ask for people to be baptised before they take holy communion. So that people take the gesture meaningfully and in full understanding of what it represents, and don’t just snatch at it as ‘food to be eaten – hurrah!’ Baptism is just a suitably formal ‘rite of passage’ (and, simultaneously a way for a church to encourage involvement in its community).
The matter of infant/child baptism and ages at which someone can ‘become’ a Christian is hotly debated in just about all circles that I know – at least when you bring it down to the individual’s capability for understanding what it means to be a Christian. (eg. an intellectually stunted person would probably struggle to understand what I’ve written above: but they don’t need to know all that above to have a right understanding of who Jesus is and what He’s done.)
But ultimately, this is why the church asks for baptism before communion.
The warnings against taking communion unbaptised are also based on the 1 Cor 11 passage, “whoever does this in a manner unworthy eats and drinks judgement upon himself” – but again, it’s not specifically to do with baptism but to do with the way in which you undertake the meal.
Baptism is an outwards sign of an inwards reality – like a wedding ring. Just wearing a wedding ring doesn’t make you married. Wearing a wedding ring when you don’t honour the marriage that the ring represents is a mockery of what a marriage should be. But wearing a wedding ring and honouring the marriage that the ring represents is both the right use of the ring and the right way to do marriage. (Conventional two-person marriage, anyway.)
This is not to cast aspersions on your ‘let the children come to me’ outlook; that’s a great perspective to take! And much simpler.
Just if you were wondering why, theologically speaking, the church has a ‘no communion before baptism’ rule.
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Date: 2019-04-01 06:38 am (UTC)Being raised Baptist, my understanding of theological positions and where they're from is very dependent on Scripture, and thoroughly lacking in any mention of Tradition. I'm trying to remedy that, but in the meantime I usually get stuck on "But which verse is it based on???"
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Date: 2019-04-01 07:37 am (UTC)But the last five to ten years have made me look at lot more at the historical contexts of scriptures. Context tells you a lot about not only what Paul is saying (which is important, yes) but also what he meant to say in a social context (which doesn't always come through when we don't know the social context).
Also, historical context makes such a big difference for things like "turn the other cheek" and "if someone asks you to carry a burden one mile, take it two". There's both an obvious meaning to us, but also a more contextual meaning that's very subversive.
...and I could go on about this all night. :)
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Date: 2019-04-01 09:13 am (UTC)I could probably join you for just as long. :)
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Date: 2019-04-05 01:32 am (UTC)I have the same problem and I'm beginning to think I will never entirely root out this way of thinking.
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Date: 2019-04-01 12:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-04-01 09:17 am (UTC)Slightly dependent on where you are. I know the Sydney Anglicans tend to be very strict. They're unusual for Anglicans, though.
In some ways, that sounds a lot more practical and relatable for a modern church. Allow people some freedom and accept various choices
Indeed! I've found it so helpful having the space to figure out my relationship with God in my own way. And I've really appreciated how often the official Anglican doctrine is... almost intentionally vague.
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Date: 2019-04-01 07:24 am (UTC)So to speak. *g*
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Date: 2019-04-01 09:17 am (UTC)