Christian Initiation: A Study in Diversity

Abstract

Abstract Prior to the late 1950s scholars paid considerably less attention to the history of rites of initiation than to the evolution of eucharistic rites. One of the principal reasons for this imbalance was that baptism and confirmation had, in the practice of most churches, generally been relegated to the status of ‘pastoral offices’ – rites performed more or less in private for individuals as the need arose – rather than being seen as part of the mainstream of the liturgical life of the Church. Consequently, until the later phases of the twentieth-century liturgical movement began to have an impact on initiation rites, there was not the same sensitivity to their theological and liturgical shortcomings nor the same pressure for their revision as was felt in the case of the Eucharist, and it was these things that provided the main stimulus for historical research. What little exploration of the origins of Christian initiation there was mostly occurred among Anglicans, for whom the nature and purpose of confirmation, and to a lesser extent the question of baptismal regeneration, were hotly debated issues during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.