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Update 41 page 6.

In Update 41:
Burning Boats?
CW Baptism
For infants?
Not out of mind
Baptism & Unity
Praxis Pack
What is Baptism?
Initiation initiatives

Not out of mind

A collection of suggested liturgies for babies in danger of death, stillborn or having died, by Althea Hayton (Arthur James, Berkhamstead, 1998)

I came across this book while on my post-Easter holiday at Scargill House (N Yorkshire), and initially picked it up because it rang bells with my own situation: Shuna and I lost a stillborn baby in 1995, and our 3-year-old son has recently been diagnosed as autistic (which is a different sort of bereavement). The book contains suggestions for a whole range of different settings in which a private but deeply-felt grief can be given some public expression, and I felt the £9.99 was worth spending for a handbook on something I encounter rarely.

But I was immediately struck by the first chapter, “Baptism and its alternatives”, which is surely relevant to MORIB’s area of interest. Recent research (as Paul Bradshaw has outlined in Update No 37 p5) shows that the movement towards infant baptism in the early church was linked to the baptising of those who were in danger of death. Althea remarks that practice still drives theology.

The first chapter contains three suggested liturgies: for emergency baptism, for a naming and blessing following a stillbirth, and for a “service of baptismal desire” to be used when the parents had expressed a desire for a baptism before losing the baby. In brief remarks before these liturgies she manages to allude to many difficult issues surrounding these topics, in a sensitive but insightful way.

One remark among many: Althea says “Baptists dedicate children, so anxious parents may be refused baptism. After hands-on experience, a new chaplain may change his view” (which she footnotes with “I am grateful to a vicar in Wales for his honest observations on this point”). So I took the book with me to a meeting for clergy at a local hospital, organised by the chaplaincy. And there I met a baptist minister who had had exactly this change of heart!

Interestingly, Althea’s “model liturgies” for baptism and baptismal desire contain no affirmations for the parents to make, not even when time would allow. Is this standard practice among hospital chaplains?

I welcome this book, but I feel out of my depth in commenting on the theological issues. We’ll try to bring you a proper article by someone with experience soon.

John Hartley

The Not out of Mind project can be contacted at PO Box 396, St Albans, Herts AL3 6NE, 01727 761719, www.wrenpublications.co.uk

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This web page was last updated on 14th January 2003.