A comment on the last post reminded me of the Great Episcopal Confirmation Debate. This is most certainly not a new one, and I was reminded of that recently when re-reading Prayer Book Studies 18 (Holy Baptism with Laying-on-of-Hands–no separate Confirmation here!) vs. Prayer Book Studies 26 (Holy Baptism Together with a Form for Confirmation or the Laying-On of Hands by the Bishop) and the 100+ page supplement explaining the logic of the rite especially after the special meeting of the House of Bishops to hammer out a list of agreed positions on Baptism and Confirmation!

Contra the Liturgical Renewal Movement and its peculiar form of 4th century fundamentalism on this issue, I am a firm believer in Confirmation and its continuing utility.

My own take approaches it from a big-picture view of Christian initiation and discipleship.

What does Baptism do? It is the sacrament that joins a believer into the Body of Christ. It unites us into the full company of Christians, the blessed company of all faithful people. It initiates us into the Church Universal–that is also the Church Invisible spread across time, place, and divided sects of the disjointed Christian family. This is why we say that people are not baptized into the Episcopal Church–because they’re not. I was baptized in a Lutheran church–not into the Lutheran Church. When I joined the Episcopal Church I had no need to be baptized again having already received the “one Baptism for the remission of sins” by being baptized 1) by water 2) in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

So what does Confirmation do? And why is a bishop required for it? As I see it, it’s a pretty simple answer. As a baptized member of the invisible and universal Body of Christ, Confirmation is that which grounds and instantiates me in the essential particularities and physicalities of an incarnate Christian faith: it ties me to a visible and particular assembly of Christian believers. If we agree with Irenaeus that the three marks of the Church are the biblical canon, creed, and apostolic succession–which I do–then Confirmation serves to orient and locate me within a particular instantiation of that apostolic succession through the physical touch of an actual bishop.

(Now–I do believe that apostolic succession is first and foremost about intent: the intent to carry on the faith as handed down from the apostles. I’m not going to argue that Presbyterians, some Lutherans, and Baptists are not actual Christians because they don’t currently have sacramental bishops. But I do think we do need them and should have them. As the conversations around Called to Common Mission went, the Lutherans said: bishops are desirable but not essential; we responded: bishops are essential but not desirable…)

So–that’s my take. We can’t be Christians by ourselves. We need a physical, incarnate, embodied community to encourage us, live with us, and take us to task. That’s where Confirmation comes in. It’s the rite that connects us to a particular divided community of the Church filled with contrary, failed, broken people so we can be contrary, failed broken–and holy–alongside them. Does our rite currently reflect that logic? Not sure–but I think it should…