Baptismal Sponsors in the 1928 BCP Catechism

Baptismal Sponsors in the 1928 BCP Catechism are the persons through whom the baptized child is named, promised for, and later taught to take personal responsibility for the vows made at Baptism. In the 1928 American Book of Common Prayer, the Catechism does not treat sponsors as ornamental witnesses. It makes them the starting point for Christian identity, then moves through renunciation, Creed, commandments, prayer, sacramental doctrine, and preparation for Confirmation.

Catechism Setting

The 1928 Catechism identifies itself as instruction before Confirmation. Its opening questions place the sponsor's act inside the meaning of Baptism itself:

A Catechism that is to say, an Instruction, to be Learned by Every Person before he be brought to be Confirmed by the Bishop.

Question. Who gave you this Name?

Answer. My Sponsors in Baptism; wherein I was made a member of Christ, the child of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven.

The Christian name is therefore not merely a label. It is remembered as the name given at Baptism, where the child was brought into Christ's Church and placed under the Church's discipline of teaching. The sponsor's place in the Catechism is retrospective: the child now learns what was done and promised when he could not yet answer for himself.

The next answer defines the sponsor's promise in three parts:

They did promise and vow three things in my name: First, that I should renounce the devil and all his works, the pomps and vanity of this wicked world, and all the sinful lusts of the flesh; Secondly, that I should believe all the Articles of the Christian Faith; And Thirdly, that I should keep God's holy will and commandments, and walk in the same all the days of my life.

The threefold form is the Catechism's map of Christian formation. Renunciation teaches repentance; belief in the Articles of the Christian Faith leads immediately to the Apostles' Creed; and obedience to God's will leads into the Ten Commandments and the twofold duty toward God and neighbour.

Bound to Believe and Do

The Catechism does not leave the sponsor's promise as someone else's act. It asks whether the baptized person is bound by what was promised:

Question. Dost thou not think that thou art bound to believe, and to do, as they have promised for thee?

Answer. Yes, verily; and by God's help so I will. And I heartily thank our heavenly Father, that he hath called me to this state of salvation, through Jesus Christ our Saviour. And I pray unto God to give me his grace, that I may continue in the same unto my life's end.

This answer is both moral and evangelical. The child is bound to believe and do, yet the ground is thanksgiving for God's call "to this state of salvation," and the continuation is by grace. The sponsor's promise is serious because Baptism is serious, but the Catechism refuses to turn sponsor obligation into bare moralism.

The same logic returns in the sacramental section, where the Catechism explains why infants are baptized though they cannot yet perform repentance and faith:

Question. Why then are Infants baptized, when by reason of their tender age they cannot perform them?

Answer. Because they promise them both by their Sureties; which promise, when they come to age, themselves are bound to perform.

The older English term "Sureties" clarifies the role. Sponsors answer in the child's name and undertake responsibility that looks forward to the child's own repentance, faith, and obedience. The Catechism's sequence prevents two opposite errors: sponsors do not make personal faith unnecessary, and personal faith does not make the Church's baptismal nurture unnecessary.

Baptismal Office

The baptismal office gives the liturgical setting behind the Catechism. Its opening rubric prescribes godparents for children and expressly permits parents to be sponsors:

There shall be for every Male-child to be baptized, when they can be had, two Godfathers and one Godmother; and for every Female, one Godfather and two Godmothers; and Parents shall be admitted as Sponsors, if it be desired.

The 1928 American book therefore keeps the older Anglican pattern of more than one godparent while making room for parents to serve as sponsors. That adjustment does not privatize Baptism. The sponsors still stand at the font within the congregation's prayer, and the Catechism still treats their promise as a public ecclesial obligation.

When the office is used for children, the minister addresses the Godfathers and Godmothers and asks the questions that the Catechism later summarizes:

Dost thou, therefore, in the name of this Child, renounce the devil and all his works, the vain pomp and glory of the world, with all covetous desires of the same, and the sinful desires of the flesh, so that thou wilt not follow, nor be led by them?

Answer. I renounce them all; and, by God's help, will endeavor not to follow, nor be led by them.

Minister. Dost thou believe all the Articles of the Christian Faith, as contained in the Apostles' Creed?

Answer. I do.

Minister. Wilt thou then obediently keep God's holy will and commandments, and walk in the same all the days of thy life?

Answer. I will, by God's help.

The omission above of "Wilt thou be baptized in this Faith?" is not a theological omission from the rite; it simply keeps the quotation focused on the sponsor's three promises as the Catechism recites them. The full office places those promises inside prayer for remission, regeneration, incorporation into Christ's Church, and newness of life.

The same office then states the sponsors' continuing duty:

Having now, in the name of this Child, made these promises, will ye also on your part take heed that he learn the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten Commandments, and all other things which a Christian ought to know and believe, to his soul's health?

Answer. I will, by God's help.

Minister. Will ye take heed that this Child, so soon as sufficiently instructed, be brought to the Bishop to be confirmed by him?

Answer. I will, God being my helper.

This is the practical content of sponsorship in the 1928 Catechism. Sponsors are responsible for the child's knowledge of the Creed, Lord's Prayer, and Ten Commandments, and for bringing the child toward episcopal Confirmation when sufficiently instructed.

Offices of Instruction and Confirmation

The 1928 Offices of Instruction repeat the Catechism in congregational form. They also broaden the duty of nurture to parents, guardians, and sponsors:

And all Fathers, Mothers, Guardians, and Sponsors shall bring those, for whose religious nurture they are responsible, to the Church at the time appointed, to receive instruction by the Minister.

So soon as Children are come to a competent age, and can say the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten Commandments and are sufficiently instructed in the matter contained in these Offices they shall be brought to the Bishop to be confirmed by him.

The Catechism's sponsor questions are therefore not a self-contained lesson. They are part of the Church's process for forming baptized children until they can stand before the bishop and answer personally.

At Confirmation, the bishop's question completes the arc begun at the font:

Do ye here, in the presence of God, and of this congregation, renew the solemn promise and vow that ye made, or that was made in your name, at your Baptism; ratifying and confirming the same; and acknowledging yourselves bound to believe and to do all those things which ye then undertook, or your Sponsors then undertook for you?

Confirmation does not erase sponsorship; it fulfills its intended direction. What was undertaken by others in the child's name is ratified and confirmed in the baptized person's own mouth and consent.

Anglican Interpretation

Michael Ferrebee Sadler's expanded Church Catechism gives a concise nineteenth-century Anglican definition of sponsor and surety:

What are they called besides? Sponsors and sureties.

What is a sponsor? One who answers in behalf of another.

What is a surety?

One who undertakes that another shall do a thing.

What is the duty of a god-parent or sponsor?

To see that the infant be taught, so soon as he shall be able to learn, what a solemn vow and promise has been made in his name.

Sadler is useful because he reads sponsor language catechetically rather than socially. The sponsor answers "in behalf of another," but the aim is teaching the child what has been promised in his name.

Sadler also explains why the sponsor's pledge is not the ground of Baptism:

The Church requires that at their Baptism their godparents should promise repentance and faith in their name.

Does the duty of the godparents end here?

No: it is their duty to see that the infant be taught so soon as he shall be able to learn what a solemn vow, promise, and profession, he hath made by them.

Is a child baptized because his sureties promise anything in his name?

No: he is baptized because he is redeemed by the Blood of Christ.

This guards a central Anglican distinction. Sponsors provide the Church's ordered pledge for future repentance, faith, and nurture; they do not supply a meritorious cause for the child's baptismal grace.

Anthony Sparrow, in his seventeenth-century rationale of the Prayer Book, likewise treats interrogation of godparents as ancient and reasonable:

Then shall the Priest demand of the Godfathers, &c. These questions, Dost thou forsake, &c. This Form of interrogating the Godfathers in the name of the child, is very Ancient and Reasonable.

Sparrow then explains why the child is bound by a promise made through godparents:

Children, who by reason of their tender age, cannot perform this solemnity, have appointed them by the Church, Susceptores, Godfathers, who shall in the name of the child do it for them. As, by the wisest laws of the World, Guardians may contract for their Minors or Pupils to their benefit; and what the Guardians in such cases undertake, the Minors or Pupils are bound, when they are able to perform.

Sparrow's analogy is not meant to reduce Baptism to civil contract. It explains why infant baptismal vows can be taken seriously before personal maturity: the obligation is for the child's benefit, and the child later owns the vow as part of Christian discipleship.

Francis Procter and Walter Howard Frere preserve a related historical explanation in their account of post-1662 revision proposals. They quote the proposed rationale for maintaining godparents:

Whereas it is appointed by this Office that all children shall be presented by Godfathers and Godmothers to be baptized; which is still continued according to the ancient custom of the Church, that so, besides the obligation that lies on the parents to breed up their children in the Christian religion, there may be likewise other sureties to see that the parents do their duty, and to look to the Christian education of the persons baptized, in case of the default or death of the parents.

This historical note helps explain the 1928 American permission for parents to be sponsors. The book recognizes parental responsibility while retaining the older idea that godparents serve as additional ecclesial sureties for Christian education.

Edward Harold Browne supplies the wider doctrinal frame for infant Baptism. In his exposition of Article XXVII he argues that Christ's command to baptize the nations does not exclude infants:

When therefore our Lord sent out His disciples to "make proselytes of all nations by baptizing them" (Matt. xxviii. 19), He addresses persons, who had been ever used to the mode of proselyting, or admitting of proselytes, which He commanded; and, as they had always seen infants, as well as adults, baptized for such proselytism, they could only have understood that they too were to practise infant baptism.

Browne is not writing about the 1928 book, but his Anglican argument explains why sponsor questions belong to a baptismal theology that receives infants as proper subjects of the sacrament and then requires their later instruction and personal obligation.

Theological Significance

In the 1928 Catechism, sponsors mark four connected realities. They mark baptismal identity: the child is named in the context of membership in Christ, divine sonship, and heavenly inheritance. They mark baptismal promise: renunciation, Creed, and obedience are the shape of Christian discipleship. They mark baptismal nurture: parents, guardians, sponsors, and ministers are responsible for teaching the Creed, Lord's Prayer, Commandments, and sacramental doctrine. They mark baptismal ratification: Confirmation is the point at which the baptized person publicly renews and confirms what was undertaken in his name.

The result is a sober Anglican account of godparentage. Sponsors are not decorative honorees, and they are not substitutes for the child's future faith. They are public sureties within the Church's sacramental and catechetical order, charged to help bring the baptized child from the font to instructed, personal confession.

See Also

• Book of Common Prayer (1928)
• Catechism (1928 BCP)
• Baptism (1928 BCP)
• Baptismal Promises (1928 BCP)
• Sponsors and Godparents in the 1928 BCP
• Offices of Instruction (1928 BCP)
• Confirmation (1928 BCP)

External Links

• Society of Archbishop Justus: 1928 Book of Common Prayer Catechism
• Society of Archbishop Justus: 1928 Book of Common Prayer Baptism
• Society of Archbishop Justus: 1928 Offices of Instruction and Confirmation
• M. F. Sadler, The Church Teacher's Manual of Christian Instruction (1872)
• Anthony Sparrow, A Rationale upon the Book of Common Prayer: Of Baptism
• Procter and Frere, A New History of the Book of Common Prayer, chapter VIII
• E. Harold Browne, An Exposition of the Thirty-Nine Articles (1883)