Baptismal Practices and the Formation of Christians: A Critical Liturgical Ethics

Unpublished final draft. For citation see published draft at Worship 76(January): 43-66.

Baptismal Practices and the Formation of Christians:A Critical Liturgical Ethics1

Christian Batalden [email protected]

‘ Obeying a rule’ is a practice. And to think one is obeyinga rule is not to obey a rule. Hence it is not possible to obey a rule ‘privately’: otherwise thinking one was obeying a rule would be the same thing as obeying it.

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, I, 202.

INTRODUCTIONIn the last chapter of his classic work, Christ and the Moral

Life, James Gustafson posed an influential challenge to the field of Christian ethics. In a footnote, he wrote that

Christian ethics as an intellectual discipline has to pay more attention to what forms the self than it has in recent history. Practically, this is important for churches for several reasons. The more that they rely on the “liberty ofconscience” rather than rules to govern behavior, the more important the formation of that conscience becomes. The more cultural pluralism is involved in forming selves, the more important it is for communities to see how their particular loyalties and values enter into the shaping of persons who are rightfully conditioned by other loyalties

1 ? Many thanks to Don E. Saliers for encouragement and a critical

reading of an earlier draft.

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and commitments.2

Gustafson’s challenge to ethicists may also be construed as a prophetic warning to the church catholic. In a time of decreasedpublic influence of the Christian churches in the West combined with ever-increasing pluralism and fragmentation of commitments, the prospect of an integrated self that can coherently live out amoral vision seems radically compromised. 3 Gustafson’s sociological insight underlies his comment for as he well knows, the cultural and institutional contexts within which individuals live bear distinctive moral worlds active in the formation of

2 ? James M. Gustafson, Christ and the Moral Life (New York: Harper and

Row, 1968), 263. Gustafson’s challenge has been answered most

memorably by two of his students who wrote dissertations during the

same period as the publication of this book: James Nelson’s Moral Nexus:

Ethics of Christian Identity and Community With a New Introduction (Louisville:

Westminster/John Knox, 1996 (1971)) and Stanley Hauerwas’ Character and

the Christian Life: A Study in Theological Ethics with a new introduction by the author (Notre

Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame, 1994 (1975)). Neither, however,

give significant attention to what I find most important about moral

formation of Christians--the worship practices of a community and

especially the ritual actions by which one becomes “Christian” in the

first place: baptism or more broadly speaking the rites of initiation.3 ? See, for example, Douglas John Hall, Thinking The Faith: Christian

Theology in a North American Context. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991),

207ff. ; Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, Second Edition (Notre Dame:

University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), 6ff.

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selves within their field of force.4 Gustafson’s concern lies in the ability of churches to form

“a sense of identity as a Christian,” a self with “integrity in accord with one’s faith.” If this is achieved, then “there can very well be a consistency of selfhood through consistency of intention that does not consciously ask for every specific purpose, ‘Is it in accord with my faith?’”5 In urging ethicists to attend to the level of character formation, Gustafson implies that to be a Christian is not primarily something one thinks or believes but something one does. To paraphrase Wittgenstein, to be a Christian is a practice. And to think one is a Christian is not to be a Christian. That is to say, Christianity is a social and cultural set of customs and traditions--a “form of life” intowhich one is socialized and by taking a loyalty to Jesus Christ and by following him as a disciple, one adopts practices that form one as a particular type of Christian.6 I do not therefore

4 ? Steven M. Tipton, “Social Differentiation and Moral Pluralism”,

unpublished paper presented at the American Sociological Association

1985; Cf. Tipton, “The Moral Logic of Alternative Religions,” pp. 79-

107, in Mary Douglas and Steven M. Tipton, eds., Religion and America:

Spiritual Life in a Secular Age. Boston: Beacon, 1983.5 ? Gustafson, Christ and the Moral Life, 263.

6 ? On Wittgenstein, see themes raised by Charles Taylor, “To

Follow a Rule . . . ,” 45-60 in Craig Calhoun, Edward LiPuma and

Moishe Postone, eds. Bourdieu: Critical Perspectives (Chicago: University of

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deny the importance of belief and the ideas of Christianity; rather, I would argue that the ideational level forms or malformsthe practices that shape a community’s sense of identity as Christian.7 The stories told (and by whom and how they are told)of Jesus directly impact the formative practices emphasized in a particular place.

In response to Gustafson’s challenge, I will examine a particular Lutheran church focusing generally on the basic formative ritual practice by which one becomes Christian: baptism. In particular, I suggest that the lack of attention to the “renunciation of the devil” highlights a major hinderance in forming selves as Christians: the implicit assumption that after becoming a Christian one can basically remain in the life one haslived previously. In a time when the formative influences of media, the business world, educational institutions, and leisure pursuits all present compelling and attractive world views, it becomes imperative that the church take seriously Gustafson’s admonition “to see how their particular loyalties and values enter into the shaping of persons.” This position, one I share

Chicago Press, 1993).7 ? See here George Lindbeck’s discussion of a “regulative theory

of doctrine” in The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age

(Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1984) 18-19, 79-85, 104-108; also a

slightly different approach to similar claims see Reinhard Hütter,

“The Church As Public: Dogma, Practice, and the Holy Spirit,” Pro Ecclesia

3 (Summer 1994), 334-361.

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with Gustafson, indicates that Christians do indeed have particular loyalties that evoke a certain set of dispositions andactions in the world; nonetheless, neither Gustafson nor I claim that the dispositions and actions will necessarily be unique to Christians.8

In the following article, I will engage in a line of questioning that aims to explore the following claim: if a church’s

baptismal practices do not facilitate a re-formation of the person from an old way of

life to a new way, from service of the world to service of the crucified and risen One,

Jesus, then the baptismal practice does not make Christians but persons whose

worldliness has been ‘sanctified’.” Behind the starkness of this claim is my concern that Lutherans and others who practice infant baptism have emphasized the power of God to effect baptismal change ontologically. This theological emphasis has been stressed to the exclusion of the sociological, therefore neglecting the practical ethical commitments that produce human conversion. One may wonder how attention to the theological side of conversion would neglect the ethical. Indeed, I would argue that the savinggrace of God in Christ forgiving sin and restoring full humanity stands as the fundamental prerequisite for and motivating force of true good works. This is the content of the great Reformation

8 ? While motivated by distinctive loyalties, Christians may find

they need act in the world in ways similar to those who hold

altogether different loyalties. On this see the full discussion by

Gustafson in Can Ethics Be Christian? Chicago: University of Chicago Press,

1975.

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claim regarding justification “by grace, for Christ’s sake, through faith” (Augsburg Confession, Article IV).

Yet, I argue that even in the great writings of the father of the Reformation, Martin Luther, later generations have missed the practical side of conversion and faith, the very human and everyday ethical work of living into the reality created by God. So, for instance, when discussing the third commandment, “You shall sanctify the holy day,” Luther says this: “In itself the day needs no sanctification, for it was created holy. But God wants it to be holy to you. So it becomes holy or unholy on youraccount, according as you spend the day in doing holy or unholy things. How does this sanctifying take place? Not when we sit behind the stove and refrain from external work, or deck ourselves with garlands and dress up in our best clothes, but, ashas been said, when we occupy ourselves with God’s Word and exercise ourselves in it.”9 Luther goes on to give very concreteexamples of the sorts of activities that would be conducive to

9 ? Martin Luther, The Large Catechism, § 87-88 in The Book of Concord:

The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, Translated and Edited by

Theodore G. Tappert, et. Al. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1959).

For a fuller working out of this critique of interpretations of Luther

and ethics, see Reinhard Hütter, “The Two-fold Center of Lutheran

Ethics: Christian Freedom and God’s Commandments,” pp. 31-54 and

Martha Ellen Stortz, “Practicing Christians: Prayer as Formation,” pp.

55-74 in John Stumme and Karen Bloomquist, The Promise of Lutheran Ethics

Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998.

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this “exercise” and similar practical suggestions for ethical practice can be found throughout his works. In fact, the impetusfor writing the Small and Large Catechisms in the first place came from Luther the “sociologist” who undertook a study tour examining the current practices in the parishes of Saxony--an experience recounted in the preface to the Small Catechism. For Luther, the Christian life was both gift and task, both God’s work and our own.10

I am merely asking what is lost and what is gained when communities focus so much on the gift and so little on the task. The task, I believe, lies in developing human patterns of communal and individual ritual action that powerfully form peopleinto ways of being in the world congruent with God’s action in Jesus.11 The character and quality of the ritual action matters

10 ? Cf. Here the Orthodox focus on askesis or spiritual struggle in

the Christian life. Vigen Guroian writes that “neither baptism nor

chrismation, however, guarantees that persons will live the “newness

of life.” Baptism liberates persons from evil to strive to obtain this

goal by imitation of Christ. Chrismation confers the seal of

perfection upon persons and the promise of sanctification by the Holy

Spirit. But the freedom to neglect or reject the divine call and the

possibility of failure to win the spiritual struggle ahead remain.”

See his Incarnate Love: Essays in Orthodox Ethics (South Bend, IN: Notre Dame

University), 62.11 ? This claim obviously is very general and I would need to

specify further what “God’s action in Jesus” means. I hope that the

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greatly (though not decisively: the theological claims regarding unmerited divine grace keep me from that level of presumption regarding the power of human efforts) in forming the character ofthe ones going through baptismal initiation (candidates, sponsors, and participating assembly all are affected by the character of the rites). These questions regarding the integrityof Christian rites of initiation and their formative power for Christian identity are concerns for the future of Christian communities in a “post-Constantinian age”, an age when the churchno longer holds the sort of cultural dominance it has held in thepast in the United States and indeed in the West as a whole. 12

My procedure in this article will be as follows. In sectionone, I will begin with an argument for the centrality of the claim that the process of becoming a Christian entails moving from one form of life to another, from “death” to “life” as the Apostle Paul puts it. Following this, in section two I offer a

article, as it unfolds, begins to answer this question.

12 ? “The single most far-reaching ecclesiastical factor

conditioning theological reflection in our time is the effective

disestablishment of the Christian religion in the Western world by

secular, political, and alternative religious forces.” See “The End of

the Constantinian Era” 200-207. In Douglas John Hall, Thinking The Faith:

Christian Theology in a North American Context. Minneapolis: Fortress Press,

1991

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case study of a baptism at a local Lutheran parish. I will firstdescribe the preparation leading to and the performance of the rite. Then, I move to a critical analysis in an effort to make clear the ways in which it misses the mark on a practical ethicallevel as an adequate rite of initiation. As an example of this, Iwill focus on the practice of renunciation of the devil in the rite of baptism and its early church companion practice, the exorcism. This example will allow me to show a key to current malformed baptismal practice--practices that do not effectively make Christians because they do not amply enough evoke the movement from world to church, from a way of death to a way of life. Finally, in conclusion, I broaden out again to offer someevidences from current sociological literature to show that practices are essential to the formation of persons. Formation through practices, if taken seriously, gives an answer to why thepastoral reform of liturgical practice is essential to the character and witness of the church on the cusp of the twenty-first century.

I. CHURCH/WORLD TENSION: A NECESSARY PIECE OF GRAMMAR IN CHRISTIAN LIFE The “dualism” of life in two modes, either the “way of

death” or the “way of life,” did not result from the thought of Descartes or Augustine or even Plato but is a Hebraic notion forged in the Israelite experience of slavery in Egypt and the liberation that followed. Christianity depends upon an ethical mode of conversion, deeply embedded in its Jewish roots, that

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asks one to choose: “I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live.” (Cf. Deut. 30:19). The idea of turning to God and away from sin and death is another way Scripture portraysthis fundamental view of human life. In fact, the Greek word forrepentance and conversion is usually metanoia or “turning around”. This seemingly reductionistic construal of the world asoffering two ways of life, one good and the other bad, has had extraordinary power in the lives of the faithful for millennia. Its logic fosters the danger of exclusivism and legitimation of violence against the “other”. But this sort of result departs from the basic character of the Christian witness to “the Way” asa life of self-emptying on behalf of the other.

The Didache, one of the earliest extant documents from the first century churches, likely was a baptismal teaching document detailing the “two ways: a Way of Life and a Way of Death”.13 Making entrance into the Christian community a choice between a Way of Life and a Way of Death suggests that in the process of becoming a Christian one leaves something behind and take on something new. In its most dramatic construal, one leaves all one has, as in Jesus’ confrontation with the rich young ruler whocould not bear to sell all his possessions (Matt. 19; Mk. 10; Lk.18). Early baptismal language attests to this ritual process of

13 ? The Didache, 191-194 in Early Christian Writings: The Apostolic Fathers,

translated by Maxwell Staniforth. (New York: Penguin Books, 1968).

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stripping off the old and putting on the new. St. Paul writes that “We know that our old self was crucified with Christ so thatthe body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin.” Paul lectures the new Christians that they are not to give in to temptation for they “have been brought from death to life” (Cf. Romans 6). In other language, one could say that the baptized are brought from “the world” into “the Church.”14

According to contemporary liturgical theologian Aidan Kavanagh, the middle-class churches in the United States have lost this tension in the midst of what he terms their “suburban malaise.” I draw on Kavanagh not because he has done careful empirical research to support his conclusions but because his sharp rhetoric captures something that affects many churches in this land to a greater or lesser extent. He characterizes the situation this way: these middle-class churches perceive

liturgical worship as a pastel endeavor shrunk to only forty-five minutes and consisting of some organ music, a choral offering, a few lines of scripture, a short talk on religion, a collection, and perhaps a quick consumption of disks or pellets and a beverage. . . .It is as though the Church has suffered a hemorrhage in its central nervous

14 ? Wayne Meeks analyses the Pauline material to show the language

leads to a model “rite of passage” where one “dies” to the “world” and

is “reborn” as a new human “in Christ.” See The First Urban Christians: The

Social World of the Apostle Paul (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983.

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system, a stroke which has deadened its senses and paralyzedits ability to move as it must and express itself as it is expected to do.15

Kavanagh’s critical liturgical theology works with the intention of provocation. He shows the reader how flabby middle-class churches can become.

This state leaves the middle-class church far short of the richer and more vast patterns of life practiced by the early Christians. Kavanagh recounts how, by the fifth century, such major churches as Antioch, Rome, and Constantinople held not a single service on Sunday but rather “an interlocking series of services which gave form not only to the day itself but to the entire week, the year, and time itself.” While few attended all the services and nor were they probably expected to do so, nonetheless the series of services were an act of proclamation onbehalf of the city--a microcosm of “the world.” Kavanagh continues:

This full public liturgy, this urban act, this duty owed to God like taxes were owed to the state (the word leitourgia was used in antiquity to designate both sorts of acts) was simply the Church manifested in its deepest nature in the human civitas as the presence, the embodiment in the world of

15 ? Aidan Kavanagh, On Liturgical Theology: The Hale Memorial Lectures of Seabury-

Western Theological Seminary, 1981 (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press,

1992), 60-61.

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the World to come, of the Kingdom, of the new and final age.It was the Church of Jesus Christ being most overtly itself before God in the world on humanity’s urban stage.”16

With this in mind, it is no wonder that Kavanagh doubts that the worship in today’s parish has much if any effect on the world, sofar has its witness strayed from the true calling of the Church as an icon of the world redeemed in the midst of the world.

Oddly enough, Kavanagh suggests, despite the “worldliness”of the suburban middle class church, its life does not truly leadto deep love and understanding of the world as the object of God’s redemptive work. Rather, an enlarged girth leads to an oddrejection of the world and a pathetic loneliness in which only numbness allows survival. Kavanagh therefore presents a picture of a “significantly dysfunctional” church neither fully itself asChurch nor engaged in strong and effective witness in the World.

World carries, one quickly realizes, a profound meaning in Kavanagh’s work, a meaning lost over the centuries of science-driven objectification. Kavanagh tells the history of the City as icon for the World and its decline through the philosophy of individualism in the West. We now live in cities--alone together--in a situation he calls “unworldly to the point of being creepy”.17 Into the unreal world of plastic wrapped

16 ? Kavanagh, On Liturgical Theology, 57.

17 ? Ibid, 28.

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feelings and numbed bodies, Kavanagh places the Lamb who was slain by us, we humans who still hold the bloody knife. If we are to recover a strong self as Church, as a witness to the Worldof God’s feast of life, we must face the cold reality of our murderous ways. This facing up to human fault alone can allows us to regain the relation to the One whose life gives life to theWorld.

The Church, it seems, is a present icon in the World unredeemed of the World redeemed. The World is already in part sacrament; it is created material that God works to invert through an encounter with the cross. For Kavanagh, the Church isnot a noun, an object sitting some street corner. Rather, the Church is a verb, a work shop in the midst of the World made up of these mixed up and odd ones called saints (who are always alsosinners), who know that it is not the Church who Christ redeemed but the world, the cosmos, the whole created order. The Church, according to the early theologians, exists as Christ enworlded; Christ’s work is the work of the Church and Christ’s work is the Church, working to do the business of God in Christ for the World.

Only with such a deep understanding of Church and World can adequate reforms of malformative practices take place. The firstmove needs to be a radical moment of truth, an admission of complicity in the “murderous ways” of the World. Facing up to this complicity and renouncing allegiance to the powers of evil then opens up a critical space for a new identity and direction of life. In this critical space, allegiance to Christ and his

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work in the world (as Church, as his body) takes shape as a distinctive loyalty formative of Christian people. This more general argument will support the claims made below suggesting that the practice of baptismal renunciation of the devil constitutes one central locus for the recovery of robust initiation practices in Christian communities, practices that have the sociological potential to recover a Church with something significant to say to the World exactly because it is not simply the World itself. II. BAPTISM ATROPHIED: WHY THE DONATISTS WERE (PARTIALLY) RIGHT

In this section, I move to a case study in the middle-class collapse of the Church-World tension and therefore of the strong practices of formation of Christians within the Church.18 In explicating the case study, a study of a baptism at a local Lutheran parish, I will first describe the preparation leading toand the performance of the rite.

Recently I attended a 11:00 a.m. Sunday morning liturgy at a

18 ? Marsha G. Witten shows some broader empirical evidence for the

presence of what she calls “accommodation” to culture in her study of

American Protestant sermons on the parable of the Prodigal Son from

Luke 15. The title of her study indicates the nature of her

findings--God does not judge us or expect us to be different that we

are but accepts us unconditionally. See All Is Forgiven: The Secular Message of

American Protestantism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), esp.

129 ff.

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large downtown Lutheran Church. It was the fourth Sunday in Lent, to be exact--a fact I noted because I was not expecting a baptism that day. Yet not only was there a baptism but a most extraordinary one. It was the baptism of an adult man and his infant son together. This fact, in itself, was extraordinary given the relatively few adult baptisms done in American Lutherancongregations.19 But the way in which the baptism was carried out by the pastoral staff was even more striking. A brief description and analysis of this baptismal liturgy will give moresubstance to my claims.

A DESCRIPTION In this congregation, preparation for adult baptism

includes two basic steps covering approximately six hours time. First, the candidate for baptism participates in a “new members” Sunday school class covering in successive weeks basic bible, theology, worship, church history, and an introduction to the parish. Additionally, one of the pastors holds a session with the candidate in order to explain the baptismal service and answer questions regarding its content and performance. Sponsors are not involved in the preparation period but are

19 ? Over the ten year history of the ELCA, baptism of adults

(16+years) has remained steady at about 7500 per year compared to more

than 10 times that for non-adults. Department for Research and

Evaluation, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

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present with the candidate at the baptism rite itself.On this and other Sundays that include the rite of baptism,

the rite is placed after the reading of the Gospel and before thesermon. On this particular Sunday, Rev. Sitts20 walked out to middle of choir area and said: “Now we take a moment to celebratethe baptism of Samuel Andrew Smith and Peter Smith.” As the organswells floated through the cavernous Gothic revival sanctuary at Victory Lutheran Church and the congregation joined in singing verse one of the hymn, “Children of the Heavenly Father,” the baptismal family and sponsors walked up into the aisle to meet Revs. Sitts and Saladly. Meanwhile a male choir member dressed in a white robe and white gloves moved to the font, a stationary carved wooden baptistery holding the bowl and water off to the left of the railing between the nave and the choir. The choir member retrieved the silver bowl from the font and carried it to the center aisle beside the Christ candle. The acolyte accompanied him, holding the ritual book for the pastors’ use.

All finally were gathered around the Christ candle in the center of the choir, prepared to begin. Rev. Saladly began,following the Lutheran Book of Worship’s baptismal liturgy:

“ In Holy Baptism our gracious Heavenly Father liberates us from sin and death by joining us to the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. We are born children

20 ? I have changed the names of the pastors and the candidates for

baptism as well as changing the name of the church.

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of a fallen humanity; in the waters of Baptism we are rebornchildren of God and inheritors of eternal life. By water and the Holy Spirit we are made members of the Church which is the body of Christ. As we live with him and with his people, we grow in faith, love, and obedience to the will ofGod.”

Facing the sponsors and family, he asked “If you present Samuel Andrew and Peter to receive the Sacrament of Holy Baptism, pleaserespond, “I do.” The gathered sponsors and family said in response, “I do”.

Having presented the candidates for baptism, Rev. Saladly read the sponsors the following directions for their leadership in the lives of the baptized:

“In Christian love you have presented these people for HolyBaptism. You should, therefore, faithfully care for them and help them in every way as God gives you opportunity, that they may bear witness to the faith we profess, and that, living in the covenant of their Baptism and in communion with the Church, they may lead godly lives until the day of Jesus Christ. Do you promise to obey these obligations?”

Again, the sponsors and the family said in unison, “I do.” At this point, Rev. Sitts walked out to the stairs down into

the nave, asked the congregation to rise, and with his back to candidates, sponsors, and family, began the renunciations and affirmations. “I ask you to profess your faith in Christ Jesus, reject sin, and confess the faith of the Church, the faith in

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which we baptize. Do you renounce all the forces of evil, the devil and all his empty promises?” The candidates, sponsors, family, and congregation together said “I do.” He continued asking one question for each of the three sections of the Apostle’s Creed “Do you believe in God the Father? Do you believein Jesus Christ, God’s only son, our Lord? Do you Believe in Godthe Holy Spirit?” After each, they all responded by reciting the relevant portion of the creed. We believe in God the Father Almighty . . . , etc.”

Then, after motioning the congregation to sit, Rev. Sitts turned back toward the candidates. The man was holding his baby with its head on his chest. Rev. Sitts proceeded to dip his handin the bowl, shake the water gently off his hand, and then place his hand on the head saying “Samuel Andrew, I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.” Peter stood watching this ritual action performed on the babe in his arms, fast asleep and calm. Then, gently leaning forward so as not to disturb the sleeping infant, Peter underwent the same thrice-placed damp hand and accompanying words.

Rev. Saladly, stepping forward immediately, faced the congregation and prayed the ancient prayer for the Holy Spirit toenliven the newly baptized:

God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, we give you thanksfor freeing your sons and daughters from the power of sin and for raising them up to a new life through this holy sacrament. Pour your Holy Spirit upon Samuel and Peter: thespirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel

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and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord,the spirit of joy in your presence.”

After the congregational “Amen”, Rev. Sitts laid hands on each, without the traditional oil, making the sign of the cross on their forehead while saying “Samuel/Peter, child of God, you havebeen sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ forever.“

As Rev. Sitts concluded this prayer, Rev. Saladly was lighting two candles from the Pascal candle and as he handed themto sponsors, he said to the newly baptized “Let your light so shine before others that they may see your good works and glorifyyour Father in heaven.” Saladly faced the congregation and asked them to stand, saying “Through Baptism God has made these new brothers members of the priesthood we all share in Christ Jesus, that we may proclaim the praise of God and bear his creative and redeeming word to all the world.” The congregation responded with“We welcome you into the Lord’s family. We receive you as fellowmembers of the body of Christ, children of the same heavenly Father, and workers with us in the Kingdom of God.“ With this, Rev. Sitts asked all to be seated and said to the congregation, “It’s always nice to celebrate the sacrament of baptism and welcome new members into the body of Christ.” Then he moved on tothe announcements of the day, the hymn of the day was sung, and the sermon commenced. No communion was celebrated that day.

AN ANALYSISThe Donatist controversy during the early history of the

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church revolved around those priests who had folded under persecution and offered tribute to Caesar.21 Some believed that these priests could no longer offer valid sacramental ministry; their actions had the power to invalidate the sacramental bearingof God’s grace to the faithful. While I do not want to say that baptism poorly done blocks God’s saving and redeeming power, I dowish to say that the Donatists had hold of an important pastoral and sociological truth. The integrity of the presiders and of the rites performed matters in terms of the results effected in the lives of the faithful.

According to one of the pastors involved, this baptism was extremely meaningful for the father. Indeed it was a powerful image to see a father gently holding his son as they together were baptized. Yet, the question I wish to raise asks: does thispattern of preparation and ritual action have the strength to make a Christian? If we only “take a moment” to celebrate the baptism, as Rev. Sitts said in his introduction to the rite, is it possible to effect the sort of change implied in the opening prayer--that we are liberated from sin and death, that we who areborn children of a fallen humanity might be reborn children of God? The answer is yes if we refuse to acknowledge any truth in the Donatist’s claims and only focus on the power of God to effect the change. However, if we are willing to say that God’s gift is also our task, that the integrity of our practice

21 ? Cf. W.H.C. Frend, The Donatist Church Oxford: Clarendon, 1952.

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develops and guides the new thing God does in our midst, then theanswer is “NO!”

To examine this point in detail, I will focus on one moment in the rite: the renunciation of the devil. I will first make several comments on the actual rite itself. Liturgical scholar Thomas Finn has argued that the renunciation and consequent affirmation, together with its accompanying catechesis, “formed the pivot around which the ritual process of conversion turned.” This is so, he argues, because the church’s conviction rested on “two coordinate convictions: just as the Holy Spirit dwelled in the baptized, so the evil spirit dwelled in the unbaptized.”22 Therefore, pressing on this particular point in the rite of baptism most directly allows me to raise issues of the tension between the church and the world in the process of becoming Christian. However, I will soon want to raise the difficult question of how the missing catechesis, with its exorcisms and instructions, leads to hollow and inconsequential renunciation and affirmation.

As the Lutheran rite of holy baptism allows when an infant--who cannot answer for her or himself--is being baptized, the minister may address the renunciations and affirmations to the whole congregation.23 While this may be symbolically appropriate

22 ? Thomas M. Finn, “It Happened One Saturday Night: Ritual and

Conversion in Augustine’s North Africa,” in Journal of the American Academy of

Religion 58: 590, 601.23 ? The Lutheran Book of Worship, Ministers Desk Edition (Minneapolis: Augsburg

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for the congregation to answer on behalf of one to young to understand, Rev. Sitts’ bodily posture facing the congregation with his back to the candidates, sponsors, and family makes unnecessarily ambiguous who is being asked to renounce the devil and pledge allegiance to Christ. This is especially true when one of the candidates was an adult who could indeed answer for himself. Secondly, while the rite is not written so as to separate the three questions of renunciation to mirror the three questions of affirmation, the pastoral commentaries on the rite state that “traditionally, the renunciation was in three parts tocorrespond to the three articles of the creed. If desired, this renunciation may be so divided, each question being answered by ‘I do.’”24 The collapse of the three questions into one is an indication of the lack of seriousness and slight embarrassment such talk of the devil evokes.

Elaboration rather than constriction of the renunciation of the devil would require some related moment of teaching during which exploration and discussion of the devil, evil, and its influence in the world and in our lives could take place.25 In

Fortress 1978), 31; Phillip H. Pfatteicher and Carlos R. Messerli,

Manual on the Liturgy: The Lutheran Book of Worship (Minneapolis: Augsburg

Publishing House, 1979), 179.24 ? Ministers Desk Edition, 31.

25 ? Alexander Schmemann writes that “the ‘modern man’ is usually

quite surprised when he learns that the baptismal liturgy begins with

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the case of an adult, time for reflection upon one’s life and actions would be appropriate as one undertook such exploration. While it is not possible to elaborate all the content of the baptismal preparation undergone by this man in advance of the baptism, the absence of any semblance of the ancient catechumenate and its rites of exorcism--the actions that made the renunciation possible-- leaves me with the sense that preparation aims more at making candidates familiar with an organization rather than making Christians through a process of liberation “from sin and death” and rebirth as “children of God”,as the baptismal prayer proclaims.

RECOVERY OF THE CATECHUMENATE AND THE RITE OF EXORCISMLiturgical scholar Thomas Finn argues that the exorcisms and

scrutiny characteristic of the lenten period of intense baptismal

words addressed to the Devil. The Devil indeed has no place in his

religious outlook; he belongs to the panoply of medieval superstition

and to a grossly primitive mentality. . . .What is of paramount

importance for us, however, is that the Church has always had the

experience of the demonic, has always, in plain words, known the

Devil.” The modern experience of radical evil such as animated the

Nazi regime in its murderous crusade against the Jews, Schmemann

suggests, should give pause to any Christians who consider themselves

beyond dealing with such notions as “the Devil, his pomps, and his

works.” See Alexander Schmemann, Of Water and the Spirit: A Liturgical Study of

Baptism (Crestwood, N. J. : St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1995), 21.

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preparation are the necessary counterparts to the practice of renunciation during the baptismal rite proper.26 In order to place the Lutheran service in bold relief I will briefly sketch the pattern of the full catechumenate as it was in the fourth century church. From this, I will then be able in conclusion to draw comparisons and implications both for current Lutheran practice and for what could be as Lutherans implement a more robust set of rites for initiation. 27

26 ? Finn, “It Happened One Saturday Night,” 597.

27 ? While Lutherans in the United States and Canada have been

influenced by the liturgical movement and the reforms of their

Catholic sisters and brothers, Lutheran efforts at a reformed rites

have lagged behind. The current Lutheran rite, though influenced by

the patterns of ritual initiation in the early Church and by the

reforms of the Catholics, nonetheless does not achieve a full recovery

of adult baptism and the catechumenate as the ritual norm and the goal

of parish practice. While a version of the Catholic RCIA has just been

published by Lutherans under the title, Welcome to Christ: Lutheran Rites for the

Catechumenate, these rites are not used in most Lutheran churches. More

than twenty years ago Lutheran liturgical theologian Frank C. Senn

( in an article critically introducing the new Lutheran “Liturgy of

Holy Baptism”) clearly called for an acceptance of an adult norm and

the restoration of the catechumenate with its attendant rites. Now

that such rites have been published along with meager commentaries, I

certainly hope this article will contribute to the adoption of these

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As people heard about the Christians and their God, they would become inquirers about the faith and could, as they were ready, enroll as catechumens (persons under instruction).28 This rite of enrollment included crossing the forehead, giving salt tothe mouth, laying on of hands, and exorcising the demons by curses and blowing. This done, they could attend services through the liturgy of the word after which they were dismissed from assembly.

When one wished to make a commitment to be baptized, one “gave in one’s name” to be enrolled for baptism and then achievedthe status of “applicant” or “elect”. This took place on the day

rites in local parishes. See Frank C. Senn, “The Shape and Content of

Christian Initiation: An Exposition of the New Lutheran Liturgy of

Holy Baptism,” Dialog 14 (Spring 1975):105. It is worth noting that

earlier Lutheran attempts have been made--upon its founding in 1854

the German Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Iowa, in its statement of

principles, reestablished “the catechumenate of the ancient church.”

Their concern for congregations to reflect “apostolic life” required

the “official and fraternal discipline” of the catechumenate “to be

practiced.” See Fred W. Meuser, The Formation of the American Lutheran Church.

Columbus: Wartburg Press, 1958.28 ? For the following I draw from the composite picture presented

in the classic work on the subject: Edward Yarnold, S. J., The Awe-

Inspiring Rites of Initiation: The Origins of the R.C.I.A., Second Edition (Collegeville, MN:

The Liturgical Press, 1994), esp. 1-66.

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before the beginning of Lent and required the sponsors to testifyto the moral uprightness of the applicant’s life. Liturgical historian and theologian Edward Yarnold describes well the heightened activity of those preparing for baptism:

The almost daily fasts, the daily instructions and moral exhortations, the repeated exorcisms, the recurrent prayers,the constant attentions of [the] sponsor have been focused on [the] impending baptism, and all have conspired to tune [the applicants] to a pitch of excited anticipation.

While some of the specific aspects of this general outline variedfrom place to place, it is a remarkable fact that the basic contours of this rigorous process leading to baptism existed in every major fifth century Christian city.

When the end drew near, the pitch rose just a note higher. According to Yarnold, the central events of the process began

on Holy Saturday night [when they] take part in prolonged prayers; [they] hear the voice coming out of the darkness commanding [them] to renounce the devil to his face, to turnto Christ and swear allegiance; [they] remain only half-comprehending as [they] find [themselves] stripped, anointed, pushed down into the water; [they] are greeted with joy, dressed in white, led into the church, shown for the first time the secret rites of the Mass; receive the sacred meal of bread and wine--often without a word of explanation.29

29 ? Yarnold, S. J., The Awe-Inspiring Rites of Initiation, 59-60.

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These rites and the catechetical practices leading to them were intended to inspire awe and to completely reorient the candidate from the Greco-roman patterns of life to the church and its way of life. Theodore, an early church father and Bishop of Mopsuestia, proclaimed this to the newly baptized in his Baptismal

Homilies: “You have been born again and have become a completely different [person].”30

The early church conviction that Christians are “made, not born” led to a serious and extended process of preparation for baptism focusing on the task of freeing the “competent” (as the enrolled candidates were called) from servitude to the devil and the earthly kingdom in order to open the possibility of a new allegiance to God and the heavenly kingdom.31 The process depended on the broader theological conviction that when one “putin one’s name” to be baptized, one engages in a battle; one needed to be released from “citizenship in an earthly and political city [to] citizenship in the heavenly city and kingdom.”32 Sponsors were required from the point of registration as a guide to this way of life in the heavenly city

30 ? Quoted in Ibid, 60.31 ? Finn, “It Happened One Saturday Night,” 597. 32 ? Timothy A. Curtin, S.J., The Baptismal Liturgy of Theodore of Mopsuestia,

Studies in Sacred Theology Number 222 (Washington D.C.: The Catholic

University of American Press, 1970), 84 ff.

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(that is, in the Church).33 After the candidates were enrolled, they and their sponsors regularly attended group meetings in Church for teaching (usually based on creedal articles--pre-enrollment catechesis was limited to the bible). However, this teaching constituted only one half of the process of formation; it must be remembered that the process was meant “literally to ‘reform’ the candidate. Formation rather than information was its thrust (‘resocialization,’ as the social scientist might callit). . . . This formative task was assigned to exorcism.”34

The exorcism took place over the course of the lenten period of preparation. The earliest record of this practice comes from Hippolytus, a Roman presbyter from the late second

33 ? Theodore of Mopsuestia suggests that “a duly appointed person

inscribes your name in the Church book together with that of your

godfather who answers for you and becomes your guide in the city . . .

This is done in order that you may know, long before the time and

while still on earth, that you are enrolled in heaven, and that your

godfather who is in it is possessed of a great diligence to teach you,

who are a stranger and newcomer to that great city, all the things

that pertain to it. . .” See Curtin, S.J., The Baptismal Liturgy of Theodore of

Mopsuestia, 92.

34 ? Thomas M. Finn, Early Christian Baptism and the Catechumenate: Italy, North

Africa, and Egypt, Message of the Fathers of The Church Volume 6, Thomas

Halton, General Editor (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1992),

5.

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century. He suggests that “from the moment they are set apart, let the hand be imposed over them daily, while they are exorcised.” The process, according to Thomas Finn’s analysis of the evidence from the fourth century church in Jerusalem, could have taken place like this:

At dawn on Monday the community assembles in the Anastasis to sing and recite morning prayer. The baptizands then process across the court to the Martyrium, where the priest wait to exorcise them. . . .Lying prone with their faces veiled, the batizands, shielded from every distraction, are very much alone with themselves. In a loud and commanding voice, the exorcist invokes Christ, curses Satan, and hissesat his baptizand.35

While these “ordinary” exorcisms continued throughout Lent, just before Easter, and often on the Saturday night one week prior to Easter, a final exorcism took place called the scrutatio or scrutiny. This rite, usually performed in the midst of the assembled community, took place in the dead of the night. The “competents” were led out to stand naked on coarse animal hides in the midst of the assembly. While the assembly chanted an appropriate psalm (Probe me, Lord, and know my heart--Psalm 138:3), the exorcism took place including a physical exam for anydiseases that would disqualify one from baptism. While through

35 ? Thomas M. Finn, From Death to Rebirth: Ritual and Conversion in Antiquity (New

York: Paulist Press, 1997), 197.

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these long and rigorous weeks the “competents” were receptive, having exorcism and instruction provided by another, these rites allowed for sufficient preparation so that at the end they could stand to actively renounce in their own words the devil, his pomps, and his works and then likewise affirm a new allegiance inGod the Father, the Son, and Holy Spirit.

The whole process of the catechumenate and especially its portrayal of the tension between being a member of “this world” and being a member of “the world to come” in the twin practices of exorcism and catechesis show that the early church set out to make citizens of the Roman world into citizens of heaven. Nevertheless, to suggest a simple revival of such bizarre ritualsin the church today would cause laughter at best, and probably scorn. Yet, maintaining the renunciation within the baptismal liturgy without any previous practice in which this rejection is explicated results in an formula empty of contemporary meaning. One option for a renewed use of the exorcism comes from the new Catholic rites. In the wake of the reforms of Vatican II and drawing on a century of scholarship produced by the liturgical renewal, the Catholic church has reinstituted the full catechumanate including exorcism and scrutinies in the 1972 publication of the Ordo Initiationes Christianae Adultorum (Rites of Christian Initiation of Adults or RCIA).36 Here, the actual

36 ? See Aidan Kavanagh, The Shape of Baptism: The Rite of Christian Initiation.

Studies in the Reformed Rites of the Catholic Church, Volume One. New

York: Pueblo, 1978.

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formulae of exorcism have shifted from a direct address to satan (where demon possession is strongly implied) to a more generalized and impersonal prayer of thanksgiving for freeing theelect from “the spirit of evil”. This shift takes seriously the modern reservations about the ancient beliefs in “spirit possession.” According to Catholic theologian and liturgist Balthasar Fischer, “we no longer speak to the Devil (considered as being present); we speak with God about the Devil (still seriously considered as personal).”37 These prayers over those enrolled for baptism take place in assembly during the service onthe 3rd, 4th, and 5th Sundays in Lent.

Catechetical opportunities for reflection on sin, evil, andthe work of the devil in the world during an extended process of preparation combined with public ritual moments of prayer admitting complicity in this and calling upon God for renewal seem basic for a serious renunciation of the principalities and powers of this world. The early church’s dramatic rites are not to be thought of as only historically interesting but unrealisticin our more sophisticated age. In the conclusion to follow, I will suggest reasons drawn from current sociological materials for paying careful attention to the wisdom of the early church ritual sensibilities, especially at a time when new concern about

37 ? Balthasar Fischer, “Baptismal Exorcism in the Catholic

Baptismal Rites after Vatican II” in Studica Liturgica 10(1974):53.

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the formation of Christians in the faith has come to the forefront of many discussions in the Church.

III. RECOVERING BAPTISMAL PRACTICE AS A RITUAL PROCESS OF CHRISTIAN INITIATION

In this article, I have claimed that today the church needs to focus carefully on those practices by which its members are formed in the faith. I suggested that this formation necessarilytakes place in a tension between two vast forces often opposed interms such as life and death, church and world, and earthly city and the city of God. If the tension is not entered and the persons are not successfully brought from death to life, from theworld to the Church, then some question remains as to their status as Christians. While this claim is polemically overdrawn,to be sure, I provide a case study of a typical baptismal liturgyin a local Lutheran parish to make the point that little other than theological assertion could be said to effect the reformation of the persons undergoing baptism give the minimalistritual practices required. I then suggest that the practice of renunciation of the devil illuminates the issue--in the early church this renunciation was paired with months of teaching and ritual exorcism aimed to make clear the distinction between loyalty to the Roman Empire with its powers and loyalty to God inChrist Jesus. However, today most Lutherans simply toss off a perfunctory “I do” after the requisite sentence regarding the rejection of the devil’s powers.

Liturgical renewal and changed social circumstances have

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combined to offer the impetus for renewed attention to practices of formation in the faith generally and the pivotal rite of renunciation with its attendant exorcisms in particular. That therelative strength of the early church practices make the practices of the Lutheran church seem lacking is hopefully obvious to the reader by this point. It remains for me to suggestsome more general themes from the sociological literature which make the point even stronger and begin to suggest why such recovery of fuller rites is so imperative if one truly intends the (moral) formation of Christians.

Recent literature in sociology and social theory has taken new account of the body and its role in learning.38 I am particularly drawn to the french sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, thetheorist behind much of Catherine Bell’s constructive work on ritual practice and Paul Connerton’s work on social memory carried in bodily practices.39 Bourdieu’s work has many aspects

38 ? Bryan S. Turner, The Body and Society: Explorations in Social Theory. New

York: Blackwell, 1984; Mike Featherstone, M. Hepworth, and Brian

Turner, eds. The Body: Social Processes and Cultural Theory. Newbury Park, CA:

Sage 1991; Chris Shilling, The Body and Social Theory. Newbury Park, CA:

Sage, 1993; and for liturgical scholarship drawing on such recent

theory, see Louis-Marie Chaucet and Francois Kabasele Lumbala, Concilium:

Liturgy and the Body. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis 1995.39 ? Catherine Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice (New York: Oxford

University press, 1992); Paul Connerton, How Societies Remember

(Cambridge: Cambridge University press, 1989).

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and cannot be fully summarized here, of course.40 I want simply to point out one major issue from his work that bears on the topic at hand: his view of the role of ritual in social change--especially conversion or rites of passage rituals that aim to produce a new person.

Bourdieu views change as discontinuity and adjustment, rather than revolution or transformation, types of change he finds much less common empirically. This is reflective of his respect both for the stability of social structures and of the durability of personality. Bourdieu examines ritual practices asa way into understanding the intersection of habitus (his technical term for the subjectively embodied cultural formation particular to a class fraction or subgroup--for shorthand, Bourdieu calls it “history turned to nature”) and the religious field (fields are the objective embodiment of formations of powerand possibility, a specific space of play in this case around religious interests and rewards). Practices--a level of social action that implies the pre-reflective “mastery” of “the rules ofthe game”-- exist at the intersection of a habitus and a field and in most of normal social life, the dispositions of one’s habitus (always already social and embodied) tend to reproduce practices that correspond to existing structures--that is, they ‘fit’ or ‘work’ to varying degrees; they are in a given situation

40 ? For an excellent and comprehensive overview, see David Swartz,

Culture and Power: The Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu (Chicago: University of Chicago

Press, 1997).

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what is “natural” to do. 41

However, when a situation in a field changes gradually vis a vis opportunities and constraints, habitus tends to adapt with some mismatch--a situation that Bourdieu describes using what he calls the “hystersis effect” where the effect of the change lags behind the cause.42 It is here that, according to Bourdieu, culture works to most clearly to shape action. The crisis of change raises questions about the reality of the taken-for-granted practices and in that space, within the religious field at least, ritual takes on great significance as the locus for thereorganization or re-culturation of the taken-for-granted habits and modes of experience.43 He writes that when, for instance, the early churches through their rites of initiation

seek to produce a new man through a process of “deculturation” and “reculturation” set such store on the

41 ? The terms in this paragraph are defined in part through my own

distillations of Bourdieu’s dense prose, especially in the

foundational volume among his works, Outline of a Theory of Practice

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977). Nonetheless, each can

be found in one way or another in the fine introduction to Bourdieu’s

work by Loïc J. D. Wacquant in his work co-authored with Bourdieu,

Introduction to Reflexive Sociology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,

1992), 2-59.42 ? Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, 78.

43 ? Ibid, 94.

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seemingly most insignificant details of dress, bearing, physical and verbal manners, the reason is that, treating the body as memory, they entrust to it in abbreviated and practical, i.e. mnemonic, form the fundamental principles ofthe arbitrary content of the culture. The principles em-bodied in this way are placed beyond the grasp of consciousness, and hence cannot be touched by voluntary, deliberate transformation, cannot even be made explicit; nothing seems more ineffable, more incommunicable, more inimitable, and, therefore, more precious, than the values given body, made body by the transubstantiation achieved bythe hidden persuasion of an implicit pedagogy, capable of instilling a whole cosmology, an ethic, a metaphysic, a political philosophy, through injunctions as insignificant as “stand up straight” or “don’t hold your knife in your left hand.”44

According to Bourdieu, the habitus thus produced directs the actions of the person in ways acceptable to its objective conditions of formation--not by some deterministic mechanism but rather through making one only say and think and desire those things consonant with the contours of one’s formation, one’s “values given body, made body.”

From this type of sociological perspective, a number of implications arise and by noting them, I will conclude. Firstly,

44 ? Ibid, 94.

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one does not become the sort of person who loves enemies and prays for those who persecute one without significant socialization into the practices of hospitality to the stranger, of forgiveness, of love toward the neighbor, etc. In other wordsthe content and character of Christian life is sufficiently different from the content and character of contemporary Americanlife that if Christians are to have any of the values on the level of appropriation Bourdieu speaks of, and that is to say, ifChristians are to really have these values, then some serious attention both to the content and duration of Christian initiation is called for. Without attention over time to the “details of dress, bearing, physical and verbal manners” etc., that is, treating the body as memory, the catechumen will likely remain more a middle class person formed by her or his own segment of American culture rather than any sort of serious Christian. Liturgical scholars have returned to the “awe-inspiring rites of initiation” from the first four centuries of the church searching for just this sort of information, no doubt,and they have found it in abundance.

Secondly, and following from the first, Bourdieu’s approach requires attention to the role of the body in social action. Bourdieu does not believe that one is ever simply an individual for an individual is the embodiment of social worlds and their histories. Bodies produced through well-developed rites of initiation would not or would no longer fit in some social situations nor would they “feel right.” One who has, through rites of exorcism, bodily practiced the rejection of certain

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aspects of the world would no longer “feel right” partaking of those worldly pursuits afterwards. One deeply embedded in Christian modes of being does not need a rule or law protecting the rights of minorities or other strangers for in their bodies they know the embrace and kiss of Christ who while they were yet strangers welcomed them and brought them into the midst of a feast of love. Attention to the body is clearly part of the ancient Christian practices of initiation: the body is crossed, anointed, blessed, cursed, stripped naked, washed, embraced, kissed, etc.45 Contrasted to these early Christian bodily practices, the case study from the Lutheran parish detailed abovein which little water is applied to the body for the washing and no oil for the anointing strikes me as hardly acknowledging the body during the rite, while the preparation simply attends to ideational content with no attention to bodily ritual practice atall.

Lastly, the approach of sociological materials indicate an attention is required more to practices than to beliefs. This seems obvious already given the two points above but the issue toraise here is the way in which practices become unreflective and simply a matter of course. Practices are the values made body in

45 ? See the provocative work of M. Therese Lysaught, “Inritualed

Bodies: Ritual Studies and Liturgical Ethics.” A paper given at the

annual meeting of the Society for Christian Ethics, Atlanta, GA

January 9, 1998.

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action. This fact provides one reason for the difficulty many faithful Christians have in explaining the meaningfulness of their participation in the Eucharist; they know what to do with their bodies and the taste and touch and sight and emotion and memory all combine in ways that both express and shape their daily lives.46 These ones who have come to the table with sisters and brothers who are black and white, rich and poor, all equally welcome, all receiving--they are shaped into the ritual and need no commentary, no explanation, for they understand the connections between this table and the meals around their table at home; between this table where all receive and the implications for economic inequality in the world. And those whoeat nervously at closed tables, wondering who is not worthy, who has not the social standing to share this table; they are also formed in ways that make connections between ritual exclusions and the other segregations of their lives. This formative level is what, as James Gustafson puts it, forms a consistency of selfhood that does not consciously ask for every specific purpose, “is it in accord with my faith?” These three points drawn from a sociology of practice are only meant to be suggestive, attempting to show that with appropriate theories of social formation of persons and

46 ? Ronald Grimes discusses this further in his Ritual Criticism: Case

Studies in its Practice, Essays on its Theory. Columbia: University of South

Carolina, 1990.

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communities Christian ethicists, pastors, and educational leaderscan indeed become much more clear about the need for ample reformed rites of initiation in Churches that wish to attend to the formation of Christians. Certainly, attention will need to be paid to the stories of God’s people and of God’s beloved who lived his life for others, who died, and on the third day was raised from the grave. These stories give directional shape to practices that in and of themselves do not shape people in any particular way. Nonetheless, the stories alone without serious attention to the character and content of the means of formation of Christians will not sustain a strong witness in an age when billions of dollars power a media formation project attempting tomake us all good consumers instead.

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Baptismal Practices and the Formation of Christians: A Critical Liturgical Ethics

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