AND
Imagine yourself in a hospital room in the NICU (neonatal intensive care unit). New parents, gathered with other close family members, have just learned that their baby has died. Overcome by grief, the parents desperately, and tearfully, are asking for a baptism because they have a sense that this is necessary to make sure their child, gone far too early, will be taken care of in the next life.
If you’ve done any kind of ministerial training, you’ve more than likely already imagined yourself in this situation. You’ve debated it among friends and colleagues—in fact, the dilemma is so common it’s almost become a Clinical Pastoral Education cliché. Do you do the baptism, understanding the fact that you cannot actually baptize a dead person and this act could potentially harm the Church’s historic witness about what baptism actually is? Or do you deny the request for a baptism, risking a pastoral response that would be not only less than helpful, but likely deepen the spiritual harm to an already hurt and grieving family?
We could spend this whole article outlying the theological and practical implications of both options, but what if the problem is accepting the dilemma in the first place? In some ways, we want to accept the either/or framing of the question because it’s easier than doing the harder, deeper reflective work that flows both from pastoral considerations and theology rather than seeing them at odds with each other. What if we stepped back and did the deeper pastoral and theological work of reflecting on whether the family is actually seeking a baptism? Most of the time, their longing stems from wanting to know that their baby is welcomed into the household of God, and they want to mark this moment with some words and prayers that are familiar and ceremonial.
So why then do we spend so much time debating this case? My guess is because getting a clear and definitive answer that fits into the either/or thinking is actually the easier way out. Don’t get me wrong: it’s probably not theoretically easier. People can go on and on about why the correct answer is to outright deny the family the baptism, often out of a not-slightly self-righteous appeal to tradition, just as easily as they can go on and on about why they should absolutely baptize the dead child, often with an equally strong self-righteous sense of having the willingness to actually put living people over abstract tradition. But in either case what people are looking for is the easy, simple solution, the right answer. And this is understandable: pastoral work, especially in the face of crisis, is hard and demanding, and it’s only natural to turn to either/or thinking that can make that work less demanding in the moment.
The only problem with this is that we were not meant to live in an either/or world. We were not meant to live in a world with only two options, of countless divisions and dilemma. We were made and are being made to live in the “and.” In the situation described above, it’s possible to both hold to the church’s historic understanding of baptism and also provide a pastorally sensitive response—it just takes considerable situational discernment and, in many cases, a willingness to improvise. This is part of the reason why Earth & Altar is aptly named. The ampersand itself describes who we are, who we were made to be, and presents us with countless options for living into that life. Living in the “and” of orthodoxy and inclusion, of our life on Earth now and in the hope of the new life offered on the altar, also takes situational awareness and a willingness to improvise. This isn’t so much a distinctive of Christian ministry as it is of Christian life.
We are people of the “and,” which only stands to reason since what is arguably the most essential and definitive part of our faith—the incarnation—is above all the supreme instance of the “and.” We follow the one who was both fully human AND fully divine, “without confusion, without change, without division, without separation” as the Definition of Chalcedon says. We aren’t looking for a middle way, or a compromise, or some bizarre mixture of both. We live in and with the “and,” and particularly in the “and” that forces us to look for the deeper unity that shows the true harmony between seemingly contradictory, conflicting, or paradoxical poles—such as, for instance, those of human and divine, finite and infinite, or creator and created.
Of course, we know that we are not fully human and fully divine. At this moment, we are nothing more than fully human. At least for now. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t strive to live up to the ampersand that Jesus brought to us through his life, death, and ministry. After all, the church fathers insisted that God became human so that we might become divine. And what’s more, we believe that we’re brought more and more into this new divine humanity, this new “and” rather than “either/or” humanity, every time we are united with the resurrected Christ at the altar.
Moving from an “either/or” to an “and” posture opens up much more common and less dramatic possibilities in Christian life and ministry than pastoral response in the face of the death of a newborn. For instance, Kara Powell, Jake Mulder, and Brad Griffin point out in Growing Young, their excellent (and data driven) exploration of practices that help congregations attract and retain young adults and youth, that congregations that successfully attract and retain young people have both clear and strong leadership and significant member empowerment and engagement (pp. 55-6). Strong leader involvement and member empowerment only oppose each other when we see leadership as doing things for people (a perception all too common among lay and clergy leaders alike). However, once leadership becomes about active delegation, vision-casting, and providing guidance and assistance through mentoring and reflection, greater leader involvement actually should mean greater congregational participation and empowerment.
Certainly, other examples can be brought to mind. One that may not spring readily to mind for contemporary Episcopalians, but which is of considerable concern to our more free-church siblings (including but not limited to Evangelicals and Pentecostals), is the seeming form and authenticity in worship. Often, the more formally structured a service is and the more its components are pre-planned, the more it becomes “merely” rote and the more it loses intentionality or authenticity. Certainly, the presence of a set of pre-written prayers and a formal, pre-planned liturgy can (and probably often does) lead to worship that is little better than unthinking rote recitation. But, as 19th-century Anglican Evangelicals showed us, it doesn’t have to. In fact, the witness of these early Evangelicals shows that Prayer Book worship can be done with intentionally and quiet fervor and, in many cases, may free people to bring themselves more fully to intentional and authentic worship. Unburdened by having to come up with words on the spot, worshipers are given the opportunity to bring their whole self to the sentiment behind written prayers.
Talking about the historic Anglican examples of living in the “and” no doubt brings to mind the traditional description of Anglicanism as inhabiting the “and” of “catholic and reformed.” And what I’d like to suggest is that maybe the way of thinking about the “and” of Christian life provides a better way of describing the “and” of Anglicanism than the oft-used via media. Rather than thinking of ourselves as a strange amalgam or, more often and more disappointing, as some kind of compromise between two poles that the use of “middle way” language engenders, Anglicanism (and other traditions that consider themselves “catholic and reformed”) should lean more into that “and.” Rather than seeing ourselves as a church that works well enough for Baptists and Roman Catholics who marry each other, we should be more willing to explore how we offer a distinctive form of spirituality and Christian practice that strives to seek the deeper unity underlying the “catholic” and “reformed” poles of the Christian tradition. We are, after all, people of the “and.”
