The Rt Rev Stephen Platten, the Bishop of Wakefield, who chairs the commission, said the new wording still implied a requirement for repentance, adding that the place of the devil in the text was “theologically problematic”. However, the Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali, the former Bishop of Rochester, warned against the adoption of the new wording, saying: “The need is not to eliminate crucial areas of teaching but to explain them”.
The Church of England is introducing a christening ceremony that removes the requirement on parents and godparents to “repent sins” and “reject the devil”.
Critics claimed the new wording, designed as an alternative to the current liturgy, “watered down” the concepts of sin and repentance.
The text, backed by the Most Rev Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, is already being used in 1,000 parishes as part of a trial lasting until Easter, the Mail on Sunday reported.
In the current version, in use since 1998, vicars ask parents and godparents if they “reject the devil and all rebellion against God” and if they “repent of the sins that separate us from God and neighbour”.
However, the new text asks them instead to “reject evil, and all its many forms, and all its empty promises”, with no explicit mention of the devil or sin.
Other articles on this topic, read here and here.
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