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Practicing Baptism: the Church As Communio and Congregatio Sanctorum

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Practicing Baptism: the Church As Communio and Congregatio Sanctorum Journal of Youth and Theology (2010) vol. 9 no. 1 pp 37-55 Practicing baptism: The church as communio and congregatio sanctorum. Rethinking ecclesiology in the context of Nordic youth ministry. Bård Norheim1 If we wish to be Christians, we must practice the work that makes us Christians1 Abstract In the Lutheran tradition, as in many other traditions, the church can be defined both as communio sanctorum and congregatio sanctorum, both as a fellowship transcending time and place and as a participatory event. This article discusses how youth ministry in the Nordic folk churches should relate to this tension in the contemporary context. The article shortly discusses how contemporary discussions on youth identity and European religious life and youth culture should inform this subject. The major part of the article first explores how contemporary communio-ecclesiology works with baptismal theology and then goes on to elucidate the baptismal theology of Martin Luther’s writings from the perspective of the tension between communio and congregatio, particularly focusing on the baptismal theology of the Catechisms, which have had a major impact on the historic “youth ministry” of the Nordic folk churches. For hundreds of years they were the only “textbooks” of Lutheran “youth ministry”. Finally, the author suggests that a theology of youth ministry which takes baptismal life in Christ as its focal point should interpret discipleship as a way of practicing baptism. This approach could be a point of departure for a theology which seeks to unite the communio and the congregatio motif in youth ministry ecclesiology. 1 Correspondence to:Bård Norheim Email: [email protected] ISSN: 1741-0819 © 2010 International Association for the Study of Youth Ministry To remain with Christ as you grow up Roughly 80% percent of the population in the Nordic countries, Finland, Iceland, Denmark, Norway and Sweden, are baptized as children. Through baptism (only) they also become members in the various Lutheran “folk churches” – churches where the majority of the people of the nation state are members.2 At the baptismal font the parents and god-parents, along with the congregation, confess the apostle’s Creed, where the church is confessed and defined as communio sanctorum – a community of believers. According to the present baptismal liturgy in the Church of Norway, the parents and godparents also promise to help the baptized to make use of the Word of God and the Lord’s Supper, to pray for the baptized and teach the baptized to pray, so that the baptized “may remain with Christ as he/she grows up”.3 Immediately after the baptism the priest proclaims that the baptized, in the act of baptism, is given part in the salvation of the Almighty God, given the Holy Spirit and made part of the community of believers, the church. But how is this proclamation of the “effects” of baptism to be interpreted in daily life? And how should it influence youth ministry in the Nordic folk churches? Religious life in the Nordic folk churches has for a long time been characterized by low attendance on regular Sunday services and high attendance in the churchly rite de passage-rites, such as baptism, confirmation, weddings and funerals. But as the religious climate is slowly changing, particularly in urban and suburban areas, this is no longer necessarily the case.4 This seems to affect the rite of confirmation in particular. In the Church of Sweden less than 40% of teenagers in each year group are confirmed. 30 years ago over 80% were confirmed.5 At the same time polls show that the numbers of young people who grow up in homes, where evening prayer and other traditional Christian practices are practiced, are rapidly diminishing. Alongside with this change, the state legislations in the Scandinavian monarch states are also subject to change. They are no longer full-blood confessional states by constitution.6 An important change has also been the profile shift in religious education in schools. Up on till 1969, the religious education in Norwegian state schools was supposed to be confessional – e.g. evangelical-Lutheran. The churches in the Nordic countries are therefore faced with a new challenge: As the churches are no longer tools of the ruler, at least not solemnly, and as the role of the evangelical-Lutheran church as majority religion is challenged, the churches in the Nordic countries have to ask independently: How should the Nordic churches relate to he fact that millions of their baptized members are not participating 38 - B . Norheim, Practicing Baptism.
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