Obviously, as a lapsed Roman not for me to determine the theorlogy of the CoE but this seems entirely reasonable:
The Church of England is to debate plans to introduce a ceremony akin to a baptism to mark the new identities of Christians who undergo gender transition.
The Rev Chris Newlands, the vicar of Lancaster Priory, has proposed a motion to the General Synod to debate the issue, after he was approached by a young transgender person seeking to be “re-baptised” in his new identity.
I may have the theology a little wrong here but I don’t actually know of anything that argues that you cannot be baptised more than once. Certainly, I was baptised twice (once immediately at birth, very poorly chap I was, then once again more formally later) and as I say, I don’t know of anything in Canon Law to say that it can’t happen again and again.
Don’t forget, baptism and christening are not the same thing. One is the blessing of the soul (and in Roman, the eradication/forgiveness of original sin?), the other the provision of the name.
Obviously, this being this blog there are readers who know all of this in far more detail than I do. So, am I about right?
Catechism of the Catholic church
That said, in cases such as yours I believe the Anglicans and the Catholics have “conditional” baptism – i.e. words along the lines of “if you are not already baptised then …”
baptism – means “to dunk”. Literally
And it’s Greek.
That’s all I know
Well, that’s me told then, isn’t it?
Does the soul, if there is such, change gender that it needs rebaptism? Did God, if there is such, make a mistake first time round? Has the vicar communicated with God about the necessity for a repeat performance?
Ljh, what on earth has God got to do with it? This is the CoE, after all…
I understood born again Christians to be dunked a second time?
Anyway, you want to reaffirm your faith by pointing out He made a mistake in your plumbing? One which you have had to bodge at considerable cost and inconvenience? I’m sure He’ll be pleased.
For pretty much all mainstream churches, baptism can be done only once (as Matt said, conditional baptism if there’s some doubt about the first time around- “if you are not already baptised, I baptise you”).
If a church does it a second time, that’s either saying the first time was invalid (which is usually difficult because the conditions for a valid baptism are so minimal (unless you’re one of the dopey hippy types who change the words because it’s too patriarchal to refer to God as the Father)), or it’s challenging the nature of baptism, effectively saying it didn’t change anything.
Therefore for the mainstream churches, doing second baptisms is regarded as a sign of fruitbat status – which is why this could become a big row.
‘A ceremony akin to baptism’ is, in RC terms, a sacramental. There are hundreds of them. This is the list from the Rituale Romanum:
Blessings for special days and feasts
Blessings of persons
Blessings of animals
Blessings of places not designated for sacred purposes
Blessings of places designated for sacred purposes
Blessings of things designated for sacred purposes
Blessings of things designated for ordinary use
The CofE doesn’t get to change sacraments. They’re fixed and the Pope himself can’t change them in any real way. They can bless what they like and will do, given that they don’t really sign up to Aristotelean natural law in the way the RCC does.
That this ceremony will end up as a Rocky Horror Prayer Book service worthy of Private Eye merely affirms Poe’s Law.
This being the CofE there will be lots of shouting and abuse then a large application of fudge.
The key is “ceremony akin to a baptism”.
Usually when people want another baptism (eg born again who has been told that Infant Baptism is somehow dodgy) they will be offered
1 – Confirmation (take on baptismal vows as an adult) or
2 – Public Reaffirmation of Baptismal Vows in a service.
There will be a reaffirmation of vows using the new name in the new identity type thing. It will not be acknowledged as a rebaptism.
The Catholics, even the Liberal Catholics, in the CofE would have a fit if it was.
Roue Le Jour, Baptism is not a reaffirmation of faith. Christians reaffirm their faith regularly every time they say the creed at mass for example.
Agree with Dr Cromarty roughly.
The Roman Catholic way to deal with it sacramentally would be as per divorce – the only option would be to pretend that the first one (marriage or baptism) never happened for some theological sounding reason.
Given the way religious people treat them, I’m flabbergasted that any LGBT people want anything to do with the church in the first place.
Matt L,
Quite. If I were a gay Christian, I’d leave the Church. People are weird.
This whole thing makes no sense. I thought the whole point of being transgender was that you feel that your mind is already (say) female but you’re stuck with a male body. If you believe in a soul, surely you’d think the soul was related more to the mind than the body? The baptism would have left its indelible mark on the bit that wasn’t — that couldn’t be — changed by the surgery. Wouldn’t it?
S2, presumably their objection is that the soul was baptised under the wrong name (and wrong-gendered name), so it needs to be done properly.
That’s assuming there is any rationality to this, which may be over-generous.
Matt L, it is puzzling. I can think of several theories but don’t know if they are correct:
1) desire for acceptance;
2) wanting to piss off the church people who will be pissed off by this;
3) church people wanting acceptance from the Guardian.
Hocus pocus, mumbo jumbo.
is a perfect summary.
Roue le Jour – “Anyway, you want to reaffirm your faith by pointing out He made a mistake in your plumbing? One which you have had to bodge at considerable cost and inconvenience? I’m sure He’ll be pleased.”
You want to reaffirm your faith by pointing out you intend to sin in a whole variety of ways too numerous to count with your new mockery of the other set of genitalia? I am not sure whether God would be over the Moon about that or not. However I don’t think the Old Testament indicates it would go down well.
Matthew L – “Given the way religious people treat them, I’m flabbergasted that any LGBT people want anything to do with the church in the first place.”
Well they have been treated extremely generously. By and large. Especially when they are dying as a result of their behaviour.
But if you have a pathology that blames everything on everyone else except yourself – it is not you that is to blame, it is your genitals, it is not you that is making you unhappy, it is society’s fault, it is not you that is hurting yourself, it is the refusal of everyone else to play your silly games – then naturally it is not enough to say the Churches can do whatever they like in the privacy of their own buildings. They are a standing reminder that some problems start closer to home. *Everyone* must be bullied into silence and compliance so that there is no one to remind them that they are the cause of their own misery.
God won’t be able to recognize them now, so they need a new baptism. God needs all the help he can get.
Interestingly, infant baptism has pretty much died out in my wing (reformed evangelical) of the Anglican church – we’re all baptists now.
I’ve been part of my current church for 7 years now, in which time various church members have had babys – not a single one of whom has been christened.
Baptism is something that happens to teenagers or adults, who understand what they are signing up for.
This accords with baptist theology that says one is saved by faith alone(not works of any sort), and therefore, baptism is a symbolism of being washed from sin and is a public declaration of faith in Jesus Christ as saviour.
We don’t (yet) rebaptise those who were baptised as infants, (thesedays mainly adults with little church background other than having been christened) although we give them an opportunity to testify during a service about their faith, in a way a little like a baptismal service.
All of which means if you came to us with this sort of thing, you would get a polite “sorry but no” response.
There is a good English tradition of re-baptism in the eighth century if that is any help. The English view was that if the baptism was incorrect (which our sources tend to express as flawed Latin) then the baptism needed to be re-done. When Boniface, busy apostlising the Germans, checked this with the Pope of the time he was told that despite someone being baptised in nomina patria, filia et sancta spiriti it was the thought that counted, and to stop worrying about the form (the Pope would have spoken debased Latin anyway, whereas Boniface as a native English (or Britonnic) speaker would have spoken learned Latin – bet the Pope loved this one…). So the Anglicans can just go back to this sort of precedent should they wish.
Not having been confirmed myself, but isn’t the issue here though that the wording refers to ‘this man’ or ‘this woman’, which may not matter to God (or may – depends on your God I suppose) but probably does matter to the transgender person. And as religion is for the good of the people following it (or controlling it – but Anglicanism is hardly very good at that) then I suspect they will address this issue, against the protests of the Nigerians.
Given the way religious people treat them, I’m flabbergasted that any LGBT people want anything to do with the church in the first place.
‘All religious people’? Rather sweeping statement isn’t it? All religious people everywhere? Or just the guys in Syria throwing people off buildings? Is that the same as disagreeing about the definition of marriage, say? Or not wanting to bake a cake – is that in the same category as hang gays from a crane?
Are non-religious people ever mean to teh gayers? Che Guevara (not noted for his piety) wasn’t a big fan, was he?
> ‘All religious people’? Rather sweeping statement isn’t it?
Yes, and one which he didn’t make. Jesus, you’ve already gone to the trouble of copying and pasting the quote, yet you still misquote?
Oh. I do beg your pardon.
How about this:
All ‘religious people’? Rather sweeping statement isn’t it? All religious people everywhere? Or just the guys in Syria throwing people off buildings? Is that the same as disagreeing about the definition of marriage, say? Or not wanting to bake a cake – is that in the same category as hang gays from a crane?
Are non-religious people ever mean to teh gayers? Che Guevara (not noted for his piety) wasn’t a big fan, was he?
> All ‘religious people’? Rather sweeping statement isn’t it?
Yes, it does become a sweeping statement when you put the word “all” in front of it. As do all other statements.
and non-religious people, are they ever mean to teh gayers, S2?
When I used to attend a Catholic church, we had a “locum” priest who would spend half the year in London and the other half in a church in California near Hollywood, of which 90% of the attendees were LGBT and made significant donations every Mass. If they ever dared to express any anti-LGBT sentiment, those donations would have dried up pretty quickly.