What has been described so far, as pertains to baptism, could be called the base, or Catholic, position. These views and practices have not been constant through the ages, but evolved through a series of stages until by the Sixteenth Century they were essentially determined as today's rites.
A group of Protestant churches can be lumped together as "first removed" in their views. It is more of an accident than any deliberate action that they share a common outlook. These churches are the Lutheran, the Moravian, the Church of England, and the Protestant Episcopal Church in America. The first three broke with the Catholic Church quite early. The Episcopal Church, through its shared heritage with the Church of England, would qualify also as a church which broke early with the Catholic Church.
Luther emphasized (and kept) the importance of baptism for salvation. He regarded baptism as not a mechanical procedure but as only one step toward salvation. He simplified the actual baptismal procedure and dispensed with many of the embellishments which had been added through the centuries. In addition to baptism, it was necessary to have faith. The role of sponsors was maintained. It was the parents' responsibility to select sponsors who were to be decent, moral, earnest, and sober. At the time of the split between the Catholics and the Lutherans, the Catholics were using three sponsors, so Luther inherited this as a starting point. Luther did reject the concept of spiritual kinship. Sponsors could be relatives, and certainly in many Lutheran churches the sponsors were almost exclusively chosen from relatives. Luther accepted emergency baptism, but rejected conditional baptism. The right to participate in communion came from baptism, not from confirmation. Luther rejected confirmation as a sacrament and considered the instruction preparatory to confirmation as the really important part of it.
With the Lutherans, church membership was not a requirement. The parents and sponsors might be church members of any kind. Often, though, the ministers used these occasions to urge the parents and sponsors to become involved in the church. In 1780, the Philadelphia Ministerium refused to impose a restriction against baptizing illegitimate children whose parents had not made a confession of their sins.
It was certainly the case in America that there was no standard for what was to be recorded at a baptism. Generally, the Lutheran ministers recorded the name of the infant, the names of both parents, dates of birth and baptism, and the names of the sponsors. Reading the early baptismal records shows that the infant was often a few days, weeks, months, or even years old before the baptism was performed. Part of this arose because of the scarcity of ministers. Parents simply had to wait until a minister was available.
(02 Jul 03)
We gratefully acknowledge the work of John Blankenbaker who published over 2,500 Germanna History Notes via the Germanna-L@rootsweb.com email list from 1997 to 2008. We are equally thankful to George Durman (Sgt. George) for hosting the list and republishing the notes via rootsweb.com.