Received into the church?

[Vasquez109]

Evening all!

Just looked at a baptism register and have seen a note written by the vicar saying "Received into the church 27th Dec 1916." Thought it meant the the family were new to the parish, but the family have lived there for years.

Any ideas what this means?

Thanks,
David.

[Andrew Tarr]

It is usually a later, fuller stage of membership after an early baptism.  The delay varies between the various versions of Christianity.  I believe if an infant seemed unlikely to thrive it might be baptised soon after birth 'just in case' and later received into full church membership, usually after several weeks or months.

[GrahamSimons]

This was quite common after private baptism at home if there was a risk that the child would die before it could be brought to the church for baptism. I'm transcribing a register at the moment and there's "a lot of it about." Not to mention the high level of infant mortality.

[David Outner]

Private baptisms shortly after birth were fairly common, especially in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In theory private baptisms were for sickly babies that might die before being taken to church; but in practice some parents preferred them. Private baptisms should have been recorded in the parish registers, but sometimes were not.  Any subsequent public church ceremony, sometimes called "reception", should not have been recorded as a baptism, but sometimes was. The 1916 entry quoted indicates a meticulous vicar identifying the event, reception, but showing that the event was not baptism, because the child had already been baptised.

[Vasquez109]

Brilliant. Thank you so much!

[steadyrollingman]

While we're (sort of) on the subject, is there any actual difference between christening and baptism? See pic below - the family had moved to just outside of Durham c1822 (the year of this record) after living in the city itself for several years.

It seems like the new vicar was determined to wet the heads of these two kids - he sounds suspicious of the father's account (rightly so, it seems, as I haven't found the earlier records) but he wasn't bothered about dunking their two elder siblings who were baptised at Durham St Margaret. Have seen the original PRs too, and they back this up.

All that aside, just seems strange that he's using the word "christ'nd" to distinguish the later event?

[arthurk]

Officially there's no difference, but in some popular thinking the baptism was the part with water and the christening was the reception into the church. Private or emergency baptisms have always been permitted where a child's life is in danger, but sometimes they were performed more generally, and this would tend to give rise to entries such as you have found.

Some clergy evidently went along with the common terminology, so the baptism register may show a baptism and a christening for the same child, as here, even though strictly speaking this is not the correct way to describe it.

[steadyrollingman]

Thx, yeah, I've found plenty of PBs, but even when the child survived into adulthood there's never been an additional, later baptism added - just that of the orginal PB, so this is a unique one for me. There were definitely no PBs recorded for either of them at the time in Durham St Margaret, where the elder two had been baptised, although I seem to remember I still need to check the other nearby city churches just in case.

My suspicion is that my 4xG-Granda couldn't be bothered/forgot and just told the new vicar their birthdays instead – possibly telling him they were the dates of PBs – to avoid a ticking off.

[Norfolkman47]

I came across this with a couple of my great-grandparents.

Both were baptised into the Methodist Church as infants.

But in their teens they decided to join the Anglican congregation in their parish - although the boy had to wait until he was 21 because his father had had a falling out with the Church of England previously.

The parish register shows each as "received into Church". This was done (in capitals) as a footnote to the page; they were not given lines in the regular chronological list of baptisms.

I suspect the C of E wouldn't re-baptise someone who had already been baptised, even in a different denomination, so some kind of official reception into the church was the only way of formalising their membership.

They were married in the parish church they had joined and were together for over 60 years.