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July 2003, Page 8.
Index of articles.
Questions:
index,
Sex & Archbp,
Yoga,
Deny Santa?
Study Islam?
Children & HC?
Did Enoch exist?
In this issue:
(July 2003)
Bishop's visit,
Song,
Question.
In our "Questions to the clergy" slot, John will try to answer anything you throw at him. Keep the questions coming, folks ...
Children and communion
Q. What do you think is the right age for children to take communion? My grand-daughter has recently joined a class at church which means she now takes communion, even though she is very young, has told me she doesn’t believe, and hasn’t been confirmed!
A. The Church of England has been having a lot of difficulty with this question, and as your answer indicates, a lot of us doubt whether we’ve reached the right answer!
There are three reasons that many Christians want to let children take communion.
First, the bible seems to allow it. If communion is a “fellowship meal”, then obviously the children who are part of the fellowship ought to share in the meal. If it is a “Passover meal”, then children should take part in it just as they took part in the Jewish Passover meal in Jesus’ day.
Second, many children do have a deep personal faith that Jesus is their friend and they belong to him - in fact, many children’s faith is far deeper than ours is as adults. It is very odd that we practice discrimination against regular children at the communion rail, but we allow stranger adults to receive the bread and wine with no questions asked.
And third, it is widely recognised that confirmation doesn’t keep children within the church. More than half of all confirmed children have stopped coming to church a year after than their confirmation, unlike most adults, who do continue to attend. So I feel, and many others do, that communion and confirmation ought to be separated from each other, so confirmation can be an adult rite of commitment.
Your grand-daughter’s church is following one experimental pattern which has worked in several places. The idea is to run a several-year-long confirmation course, admit the children to communion at the start of it, have the confirmation about two-thirds of the way through, and try to integrate the children into the adult life of the church. So they hope that she will have grown up a bit and changed her mind about belief by the time she gets round to the confirmation. I hope and pray they are right.
On the other hand, as you say, maybe she’s only going and taking communion because that’s what the crowd is doing. If so, it’s a pity she should start her exploration of Christianity with a sacrament which is really supposed to be about commitment.
John Hartley