An Anglican Theology Of Baptism

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Anglicans retained the Catholic understanding of baptism as a sacramental washing away of sin. As the evangelical party emerged out of the Wesleyan revivals of the eighteenth century, some nineteenth-century Anglicans challenged the theology of baptismal regeneration. It was, in turn, defended by Edward Pusey and Frederick Denison Maurice. During the twentieth century, some Anglicans have called for the sacrament of confirmation to be reunited with baptism. This reunification has not occurred, and most Anglicans have simply admitted baptized children to Communion before they have been confirmed. Some twentieth-century Anglican theologians have abandoned the theology of original guilt. Infant baptism then becomes a demonstration of the priority of God's grace in salvation. However, Anglican baptismal liturgies retain traditional forms, including the renunciation of Satan and the interrogative recitation of the Apostles' Creed. Sixteenth-…