new-fangled baptismal formulas

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Here's a doozy for you all!

Richard Masoner
---------------

(This is a press release from: United Church of Christ Office of
Communication Cleveland, Ohio -- and is thus freely copyable)


  THEOLOGICAL COLLOQUY WRESTLES WITH BAPTISMAL WORDS

  CRAIGVILLE, Mass.--Do local congregations have the authority to
  change the words with which the sacrament of baptism historically has
  been administered in Christian churches?

  That issue was on the table at the 12th Craigville Theological
  Colloquy July 17 to 21 at the Craigville Conference Center on Cape
  Cod, Mass. The colloquy is one of the red-letter events in the annual
  theological calendar of the United Church of Christ, but the meeting
  is also broadly ecumenical.....

  Christian churches traditionally have administered baptism "in the
  name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit...." Most
  UCC congregations use the traditional words. But a few UCC
  congregations are independently experimenting with other formulas,
  including "Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer."

  The argument for change is that the words "Father" and "Son" imply a
  male deity, when in fact God is neither male nor female. The church
  reinforces patriarchal oppression of women when it uses masculine
  images in baptism, say advocates of change.

	[snip]

  Critics also said alternative language distorts the church's
  trinitarian faith. "Father, Son and Holy Spirit" are three persons,
  not three functions. Formulas like "Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer" do
  not affirm that God, through baptism, invites women and men into a
  relationship with the three persons of the Trinity. Instead, they
  said, it seems to imply that baptism is administered in the name of
  three theological functions--an abstraction, not a relationship.

	[snip]

  Instead of replacing "Father, Son and Holy Spirit" with an impersonal
  formula, said theology profressor Gabriel Fackre of Andover Newton
  Theological School in Newton Centre, Mass., the ecumenical church
  might consider expanding the formula with words that "deconstruct"
  the ideology that God is male....

  Fackre said ecumenical dialogue on baptism should look carefully at a
  formula that has been used at The Riverside Church in New York City:
  ". . . in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy
  Spirit: One God, Mother of us all."