Topical Tuesday: Speak (not) of the Devil

The church is experimenting with its baptism liturgy. Edward Malnick, writing in the Telegraph, reported the news as follows: ‘In the current version... vicars ask parents and godparents if they “reject the devil and all rebellion against God” and if they “repent of the sins that separate us from God and neighbour”. However, the new text asks them instead to “reject evil, and all its many forms, and all its empty promises”, with no explicit mention of the devil or sin.’

Reading this, I remembered a paper by Mike Ovey, The Grace of God or the World of the West? from GAFCON 2. In it, he said, ‘My first really significant encounter with worldwide Anglicanism came at theological college. It was 1990 and an east African priest was on secondment with us. He preached in the college chapel. He posed a question. Which gospel do you westerners want us to believe? The one you came with or the one you preach now?’

When Mike Ovey asks, ‘What is this difference between what we westerners say now and what we said then?’ the new baptism liturgy constitutes one of those differences.

The Liturgical Commission was reminded that ‘nothing in the material they produced should imply an alteration in the theology of baptism’. However, the new material describes itself as emphasising ‘the love of God, the need to turn from destructive influences and behaviour and the cleansing and indwelling of the Holy Spirit’. Influence and behaviour replaces the former emphasis on the devil and the sin that separates us from God and our neighbours.

It seems that in the new baptism liturgy, we are redefining evil. Is it not so that anyone, from any background or faith, would be able to make the new baptism promise to ‘reject evil and all its many forms and all its empty promises?’

Mike Ovey describes how baptism involves repentance, and that for centuries repentance has played a vital part in Anglican worship. He then says: ‘if you offer inclusion without repentance, then you are offering inclusion without the forgiveness of sins.’ He describes how ‘Western churches do repent of some sins...sins that the world recognises,’ and he gives racism and colonialism as examples. He adds, however: ‘I think the acid test of whether our repentance is really towards God is when God and the world disagree.’

God and the world will disagree about the devil. God and the world will disagree about God! Is this revision to language being made to accommodate those who want Christenings without Christ, baptisms without discipleship, and to visit church without becoming church?

A service of thanksgiving is a great alternative to a baptism for a family who want to thank God for the gift of a child, and ask his help with the raising of that child, but without having to confess doctrines they don’t believe and become church when that is not what they intend.

The church hopes it will attract more people to itself by changing its language. Mike Ovey describes how ‘the Church of England, has made a virtue of trying... to bring the church into line with the world around it. Now the theory behind that was that if the church did this, people in the secular West would come back to church... That hasn’t happened.’

Mike Ovey encourages leaders to ask whether it might not in fact be that their modernisation programme is part of the problem.

I am not sure I have any solutions to this, except that in my own context I will offer baptisms with the full liturgical decision. Thanksgivings are a better alternative to this ‘baptism-lite’, as Bishop Pete Broadbent has called it.

At baptism preparation, candidates are introduced to the key doctrines of the faith. It seems strange then not to acknowledge these doctrines more explicitly in the service for which candidates have been prepared. The revised baptism liturgy will not introduce people fully to the God they meet in the scriptures and in Jesus Christ.