But traditional christenings for babies? That’s a different story, or so we are told in a recent Mercury article. It said that in Tasmania, naming days (a more casual approach with celebrants doing the honours) are becoming a popular alternative to church baptisms. One couple said they had decided on a naming day because they didn’t want their child christened as they weren’t into the “church thing”.
Although his photo was published with the report, Anglican Bishop John Harrower had just a very brief comment, and that was to say that while baby baptisms had declined, adult christenings were up. We needed to know more about this. Statistics on how many adult christenings, and what people are taking this step, would have left readers better informed on the trend.
What readers also don’t know is that elsewhere the decline in baby christenings is worrying the Anglican leadership, to an extent that in England it has launched a campaign to make such baptisms more popular.
That’s because British baptisms have halved in 15 years and fewer than one in six of all infants is now baptised. In the major cities it’s down to one in ten (it would be interesting to know the comparative Tasmanian Anglican figures, particularly for Hobart). Judge the English decline from the fact that in 1990 there were 184,000 Anglican baptisms, but by 2005 these had dropped to 93,000.
Back in the early 1930s seven out of ten of all children were baptised into the Anglican Church there, and more than a third were still so christened in the early 1980s.
The church has now produced a book, Connecting to Baptism, which is being circulated to clergy asking them to modernise their approach. One suggestion is that they should make cohabiting couples feel more welcome, as a way of encouraging them to become regular churchgoers.
The guide says: “For some families today, the baptism of a child represents an opportunity for the first public acknowledgement of the parents’ relationship. Churches can use this as an opportunity to promote marriages.”
When it comes to cohabiting couples, it’s an important consideration, for another British report shows that the number of unmarried couples living together has jumped by two-thirds under the decade of the Labour government. Studies show that one in five women chooses to live with a man rather than marry or stay single while they are in their early 20s.
I wonder if Bishop John has been given a copy of Connecting to Baptism?

The Old Bear

As the Tasmanian Anglican Church pushes its new agenda there are aspects of tradition to think about.
What of those important family church ceremonials, for births, marriages and deaths? We see from our daily newspaper the last two still follow tradition, with church wedding photos constantly published, as are notices of funeral services.