Admission to the Table and Recent United Methodist Debate

What does the ritual in The United Methodist Hymnal (1989) and The United Methodist Book of Worship (1992) say about admission to the Table, and what was the thinking and discussion on this issue within the committees involved in the twenty-four-year process (1968-1992) that produced the current ritual?

What follows is a "rough and ready" testimony to a twenty-four-year history (1968-1992) of liturgical revision in which I was intimately involved from start to finish. It is a history hard to document, since much that happened related to admission to the Table does not appear in any minutes, correspondence, or printed liturgy (trial or definitive). Much can be documented only through the memories of those who participated. Shortly after the formation of The United Methodist Church in 1968, its Commission on Worship, of which I was Executive Secretary, began what turned out to be a twenty-four-year process leading to the publication of the thoroughly revised ritual in The United Methodist Hymnal (1989) and The United Methodist Book of Worship (1992). In 1972 the Commission on Worship was among the components that were merged to form the Discipleship Ministries, and I then directed worship resource development on the Discipleship Ministries staff until my retirement in 1993.

My recollection is that the issue of who is invited to the Table was in our consciousness through all the drafting and revising from the preparation of The Lord's Supper: An Alternate Ritual 1972 right through what appears in the 1989 Hymnal and the 1992 Book of Worship. People such as Jim White, Don Saliers, Larry Stookey, and I, who took prominent roles in the discussion and did most of the actual drafting and editing of the eucharistic liturgies, were quite aware from the beginning that baptism had historically been a precondition of admission to the Table. We were also aware that Wesley's view of the Lord's Supper as a "converting ordinance" in a population that was practically one hundred baptized did not mean that he intended to commune the unbaptized. These points were certainly made from time to time in committee discussions. I don't recall other members of the committee mounting any serious challenge to us on the accuracy of these facts.

We were mindful that the modern United Methodist custom of "open Communion" would be a problem whenever official "inter-Communion" with certain denominations was proposed.

We also knew that conditions for admission to the Table are stated in the Invitation that has historically preceded the General Confession in our ritual. As found in "A Service of Word and Table IV " in the 1989 Hymnal (page 26) it reads:

Ye that do truly and earnestly repent of your sins,
and are in love and charity with your neighbors,
and intend to lead a new life, following the commandments of God,
and walking from henceforth in his holy ways:
Draw near with faith, and take this Holy Sacrament to your comfort,
and make your humble confession to almighty God.¹

There was, as I recall, no challenge ever raised to having such an invitation in "A Service of Word and Table I and II. " Since these were to be modern-language texts, the language was modernized. Care was taken not to encourage an over-scrupulosity that would exclude those who could not claim perfection in love and charity for their neighbors or total purity of intention to walk in God's holy ways. This is the Invitation from these two texts in the 1989 Hymnal (pages 7, 12):

Christ our Lord invites to his table all who love him,
who earnestly repent of their sin
and seek to live in peace with one another.
Therefore, let us confess our sin before God and one another.²

On course, neither the traditional Cranmer invitation nor its modern equivalent addresses the issue of baptism as a precondition.

The first specific discussion that I recall of baptism as a prerequisite for admission to the Table came about 1973-74, when several units of the General Board of Discipleship set up a joint task force to study Christian initiation. It was headed by theologian Thor Hall, and I was one of the task force members. At the task force's request, Professor Hall produced a detailed proposal, with careful theological grounding.

One of his concerns was to take a holistic view of the three historic components of the rite of Christian Initiation: baptism, confirmation, and first Communion. After acknowledging that this was the order in which these component steps would normally be taken, he suggested that for some people these steps could be taken in another order. Just as first Communion may precede confirmation, so it may even precede baptism. It should be clear that Professor Hall was not making this proposal to make baptism less necessary; it was a proposal for flexibility in the order in which these necessary steps might be taken by a given person. Of course, once one of these steps had been taken, it would be a serious pastoral duty to encourage the candidate to complete the three steps. My impression is that Professor Hall's position would have been supported by most of the task force.

It soon became evident, however, that the whole report, not primarily this aspect of it, would be highly controversial. Discipleship Ministries discontinued the task force and took no action on any of the proposals in Thor Hall's paper. I do not know where a copy of Thor Hall's paper or the minutes of the task force meetings may be found. I hope they have gone to our denominational archives at Drew.

Instead, the Section on Worship went to work on a revised rite of Christian initiation that would combine (1) water baptism, (2) laying-on of hands and optional anointing (confirmation), and (3) first Communion — in that order. Such a rite was developed through many drafts, and ait ppears in the 1989 Hymnal and 1992 Book of Worship as The Baptismal Covenant (I, II, and III). The term "confirmation" was by this time dearly beloved by United Methodists — although we had used it only since 1964 — and to spare getting into a controversy we feared we would lose, we agreed to apply the term to the first personal affirmation of the Baptismal Covenant by one baptized as a young child or infant.

But this does not mean that there was agreement that these steps in Christian initiation must be taken in that order — far from it!

In the first place, the various committees that revised the baptismal liturgies had no difficulty reaching a consensus that the baptismal liturgies should provide for the Communion of the candidate following water baptism and laying on of hands, regardless of the candidate's age. This in itself was a major step, since many (although far from all) in the United Methodist Church and its predecessors have believed communicants must have a cognitive and verbalized understanding of "what they are doing" before admission to the Table. There were a few who insisted on confirmation as a prerequisite; but most seemed to agree that older children, even if unconfirmed, may be admitted to the Table if there was evidence they "knew what they were doing." Thus the issue of admission to the Table for the great majority of United Methodists has not concerned baptism or confirmation, but rather the communicant's spiritual state of readiness.

Second, it was clear that, whatever its degree of historical or theological support, "open Communion" — at least for those old enough to "know what they are doing" — was deeply entrenched as a modern United Methodist custom and strongly supported by the United Methodist rank and file clergy and membership. There seemed to be several pastoral reasons for this.

1. Within living memory, controversies in our tradition about admission to the Table have centered not on whether one has been baptized, but on one's understanding and spiritual readiness. "Do I understand what I am doing?" "Am I worthy?" As United Methodists have increasingly welcomed young children and those with scruples about unworthiness to the Lord's Table, our general disposition has been not to erect a new hurdle (baptism) that is foreign to what we recall about our tradition.
2. Many, especially pastors, are acutely aware of "hard cases," where a requirement of baptism would surely be misunderstood and perceived as rejection. For example, wouldn't a child whose parents had delayed baptism until the child could make a personal profession of faith feel rejected upon being kept back when his or her baptized peers communed? There are also many adults with psychic scars from previous rejections who will have a strong visceral reaction to what they perceive as a new rejection.
3. There is a strong faction of United Methodists with a passion for inclusiveness, who would have a strong, visceral reaction to adding another precondition — baptism — to what is already in the Invitation preceding the General Confession. Indeed, such pastors often interpolate into the liturgy a sweeping open invitation in their own words, and many congregations have come to expect this.

An example of both 2 and 3 above may be seen in the congregation where I regularly worship. This congregation has a special ministry with people who have been badly hurt — often in other churches — and for whom it has become a deeply meaningful ritual for the pastor to say, "Everyone has a place at this Table" and for the congregation to repeat these words at our weekly celebrations of the Lord's Supper.

As a practical matter, we clearly foresaw as we prepared the texts and rubrics for the Lord's Supper that any restriction of the invitation to the baptized would be resisted by a powerful coalition of both evangelicals and liberals, who for diverse reasons, would strongly oppose any such rubric. Indeed, such a coalition — aided by the media, who would surely publicize the controversy — would not only probably get the rubric deleted at General Conference but also could easily endanger the acceptance of the whole new liturgy.

No rubric dealing with admission to the Table was added to the Lord's Supper liturgy in The United Methodist Hymnal (1989). There was consensus that most rubrics were better left to the then forthcoming Book of Worship. The Book of Worship Committee, conscious of all the above, drafted the following sentences very carefully and, as I recall, had consensus on them. In The United Methodist Book of Worship (1992), they read (page 29):

"All who intend to lead a Christian life, together with their children, are invited to receive the bread and cup. We have no tradition of refusing any who present themselves desiring to receive."³

Several comments on these sentences may help to clarify the intentions behind them.

"All who intend to lead a Christian life. . . are invited to receive the bread and cup." This says essentially the same thing as does the Invitation before the General Confession in our liturgy.

". . . together with their children, . . ." deals with the issue of children and Communion and reflects a theology that sees children as being under the covenant with their parents (Acts 2:39).

"We have no tradition of refusing any who present themselves desiring to receive." There was agreement that if people present themselves, they should be served.

On these three matters, there was agreement.

On the matter of baptism as a stated precondition of invitation to Communion — my sense is that the committee considered that the time was not ripe to come down on one side or the other of this issue. To do so would raise up a costly and damaging controversy that could endanger the overwhelming adoption of the new Book of Worship. That certainly was my view.

Looking at the matter more than ten years later, I must say that this is still my view. Perfect clarity is not necessarily a good thing; sometimes silence or ambiguity is a wiser policy. Normally, baptism precedes Communion; that much is clear. The theology behind that sequence makes excellent sense. Certainly if a pastor notices that an unbaptized person is communing, it is a signal that pastoral care is called for to lead the communicant to fullness of commitment and complete Christian initiation.

But in my present judgment, attempting to make baptism before first Communion an invariable rule would carry unacceptable costs. So many people — liberals and evangelicals alike — would oppose such an attempt that it is doubtful that it would pass. Its inclusion could endanger the whole report. If it did pass, I am convinced it would be widely ignored. Pastors would be aware of numerous "hard cases" where people would feel needlessly rejected and hurt.

I am emphatically not stating that we should come down with a law mandating totally open invitation. Being the son of a lawyer, I remember that "hard cases make bad law." Pastors should be free, if they see fit, to use the term "baptized Christians" in extending the invitation if they think this is wise.

I am also aware that in future ecumenical or bilateral negotiations toward intercommunion, some more definite statement may eventuate.

I would, however, say that in such interdenominational negotiations, we would be wise to bring our tradition of "open Communion" into the negotiations to ensure that what is good and valid about it gets full airing in the negotiations. I would also suggest that when the day arrives for such negotiations, we would profit from examining the experience and actions of other denominations such as the U. C. C. and the Presbyterians, who also have many pastors who issue sweepingly open invitations. The whole subject deserves much more ecumenical discussion than it has yet received.

In short, what I am saying is that it may be best to take an ambiguous position. It wouldn't hurt to acknowledge that there are matters on which we don't yet have consensus, and that this is one of them.

Notes

¹From A Service of Word and Table IV © 1957 Board of Publication, Evangelical United Brethren Church. Copyright © 1964, 1965, 1989 Used by permission.

²From A Service of Word and Table II © 1972, 1980, 1985, 1989. United Methodist Publishing House. Used by permission.

³From An Order of Sunday Worship Using the Basic Pattern © 1985, 1989, 1992 United Methodist Publishing House. Used by permission.

Hoyt Hickman is the former Director of Worship Resources and Research for the Discipleship Ministries.