Just spent a couple hours rereading and labeling my posts. I suspect that I've gone from no labels to far too many, but that's how things go. Is that an em-dash or a hyphen there?
Having some thoughts on the whole baptism/confirmation thing, due to a post at RevGalBlogPals.
I feel like there ought to be something to mark me actually turning Christian, but I've already been baptized and confirmed (and had Eucharist), and I can't get baptized twice, can I?
If I were a much more Evangelical type I suppose I'd call this being born again and maybe answer and altar call -- am I right about that? I don't even know enough to know -- but I am so, so not the Evangelical type. I guess being Catholic (even Independent/Ecumenical Catholic) is about as far on the other side of the scale as you get.
So I don't know. I kinda feel like the desire for something like that is maybe selfish, and I hate being the center of attention (and I'm thinking about doing what?). And I have no idea what'd be appropriate anyway.
It's a thing to think about, in any case.
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6 comments:
Kate, my dear, I have just the ritual you're looking for. It's in the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer, and it's called the Reaffirmation of Baptismal Vows.
You have undertaken a significant spiritual conversion/commitment process, which deserves to be marked liturgically--and, as always, that will be a gift to the worshipping community taking part as well as to you.
It's basically the same as Confirmation except you don't actually repeat that part. Though, actually, if you were confirmed Lutheran, that might not be accepted by Catholic/Episcopalian types who are big into apostolic succession. So I think you can get confirmed again anyway.
ICs aren't usually as hung up on this as RCs, and if you believed strongly in the validity of yours I would back you in fighting for it. But since you don't, and with some good reasons, it sounds like you might actually want to have the other confirmation. Only trick with that is it might take a while to schedule because you need a bishop to do it. But that would give you time to do some preparation maybe with your cool priest. And maybe it would be all the more meaningful for that.
And maybe in the interim, if you want, you could ask him about doing a little something on the reaffirmation line--Pentecost would be a perfect time liturgically, though it would have to be planned tout suite.
FYI the text of the BCP rite can be found
here
Another possibility, depending on where you were confirmed and where you are now (specifically if you are not now participating in the same national church as you were when you were confirmed), is Reception into the Church (which is right in the same service with Confirmation and Reaffirmation of Baptismal Vows). Also, if you'd like something that doesn't require the Bishop's involvement, there's the Form of Commitment to Christian Service (right afterwards in the BCP).
The Episcopalians recognize Lutheran confirmation as valid, so Lutherans becoming Episcopalian get Received just as Catholics do.
Oh, cool, Jim, I didn't know that, since RC and IC churches usually just recognize a couple of Scandinavian Lutheran groups as having valid succession. A friend of mine who was confirmed Mo. Synod Lutheran as a devout teen and is now an IC priest was just told he had to be reconfirmed (conditionally and privately) by his new bishop, which I thought was rather insulting...
Thanks to you both! I'll look into things and think about what feels right to me and talk to the priest at my church if that's what winds up being the right thing. Alas, I have to work this weekend and likely won't make it to church at all...of all the weekends to miss it!
Actually, I know TEC recognizes ELCA; I'm not sure about other variants of the Lutheran church.
It does all get awfully complicated, doesn't it?
Thanks for the info, Jim.
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