By Kathleen Staudt
Whenever a baby is baptized in my congregation, the priest presents the newly baptized child to the congregation and announces joyfully. “Join me in welcoming the newest member of our church,” and there is applause, and rejoicing and delight all around. Baptism is what makes us part of the Body of Christ, the Church .
When we welcome the newly baptized as our newest “member,” the celebration is of inclusion, expressing the open arms of the community of faith. Theologically it is the incorporation of a person into the mystical Body of Christ, of which we are all “living members,” and we celebrate that, even though we know that often the baptism of a child is primarily a rite of passage for a family.
But very quickly, even well intentioned language about “membership” begins to sound like language of exclusion. I’ve been mulling this over as our congregation begins the process of revising our bylaws, part of which involves deciding who is a “member” of the congregation, mainly for purposes of vestry elections and voting at the annual meeting.
The old bylaws defined a member of the church as a communicant in good standing who made a regular financial pledge. But the question has been raised lately about whether one can be a “member” of the church without making a pledge: whether it is sufficient to have made a financial contribution during the previous year – whether membership should rely on making a financial contribution at all. Our culturally diverse congregation’s mission statement is “to be a home for all God’s people.” How does that square with putting a financial requirement on “membership”? people wonder, perhaps rightly. Our rector wants to keep the bylaws language about membership consistent with what he says at every baptism. As long as you’re baptized and we’ve recorded it here, you’re a member. That’s what the canons say. So far, so good
But in the theology expressed in our local practice, this all quickly becomes more problematic. Under our current bylaws, the bar is actually higher for voting at the annual meeting than it is for receiving communion! On the one hand, the priest’s announcement at each baptism reminds us that we are members by virtue of our baptism. At Eucharist, like many Episcopal churches, we have a local practice of open communion: we gladly welcome all who wish to receive.
In practice, then, in a post-Christendom world, Eucharist is for some people the point of entry into the life of the church. Baptism, for an adult not previously baptized, becomes once again the major step of risk and commitment that it was for the earliest Christians — a serious moment of intentional commitment to Christ. We do not insist that someone prove that they are baptized before they come to the altar. We have lost that ancient connection between a catechumenate and admission to the Eucharist, and the statement that this makes about Christian identity: that we are baptized into both the death and Resurrection of Christ, and that Eucharist is the meal that nourishes us for faithful living. I love that teaching, in its positive version. I believe it.
The trouble is, to someone coming in the door of the church for the first time, what I think of as an inclusive statement: “All baptized Christians are welcome to receive” gets heard as exclusion. I’ve experienced what it’s like to feel excluded from the Eucharist (see my previous post), and I see the wisdom of the open table practiced in my church and in many Episcopal churches now: we simply say “all are welcome to receive” and leave it to the Holy Spirit, working through the life of the local community, to invite those who are drawn to Christ to receive communion, and perhaps eventually, if they are not baptized, to embrace what amounts to a “believer’s baptism” – making their own adult commitment to the Christian life, in full awareness of all that it involves. But I think we have some work to do on supporting and encouraging people toward that second step. And on remembering why Baptism is important.
One of these days there will have to be a conversation in the Episcopal Church about open communion and how we understand it theologically. It seems to have become part of our witness to an open and generous-hearted Christianity in a post-Christian world, and I expect it is here to stay. Indeed, I welcome the practice, despite theological reservations. But the power and grace of Baptism also needs to be reclaimed as part of our understanding of who we are as Christians.
I am glad that ours is a liturgical tradition where “praying shapes believing,” where to some extent we learn where the Holy Spirit may be leading us through our evolving practice, rooted in tradition but also changing with the times. So where is the practice of open communion leading us, in terms of our understanding of what it means to be “members” of the body of Christ? Is there perhaps an opportunity here, in a post-Christian world, to reclaim baptism itself as a truly intentional commitment to Christian discipleship? I really am interested in what readers of the Café have to say about this.
Dr. Kathleen Henderson Staudt keeps the blog poetproph, works as a teacher, poet, spiritual director and retreat leader in the Washington DC area. She is the author of two books: At the Turn of a Civilisation: David Jones and Modern Poetics and Annunciations: Poems out of Scripture.