Baptism vs Christening: What’s the Difference? A Christening Is a Child’s Baptism

A christening is a baptism, usually of a baby. The English word names the service where a child is baptized and puts the weight on becoming a Christian and receiving a Christian name. The Church of England says there is no difference between a christening service and a baptism service. Baptist churches do not christen babies; they baptize only believers.

Is a christening the same as a baptism?

Yes. The Church of England, which uses both words, answers the question directly: “There is no difference between a christening service and a baptism service.” It adds that “Some churches will use the word ‘baptism’ and some the word ‘christening’,” and compares the pair to a wedding and a marriage: “Babies are baptized during a christening service just as couples are ‘married’ during a ‘wedding’ service.” The Methodist Church in Britain says the same of christening: “This is not a separate practice in the Church, but simply another name for Baptism.”

Whatever the service is called, its centre is the water. In the Church of England’s words, “At a christening a child is baptized with water. This is the heart of a christening.” At the font the Church of England’s minister uses the English word baptize, not christen: “I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.”

What does christening mean?

The English word christen means, literally, “to make Christian.” It comes from the Old English cristnian, “to baptize,” built on cristen, the Old English word for a Christian. By about 1200 it meant “to baptize into the Christian church,” and by about 1300 the English noun christening meant the “act or ceremony of baptizing.” The name Christian itself is far older than English: Acts records that “the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch” (Acts 11:26).

The English word baptize came later, through French and Latin, from the Greek baptizein. The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains that “This sacrament is called Baptism, after the central rite by which it is carried out,” and that the Greek word means to plunge or immerse. The Catechism reads that plunge as a burial with Christ and a rising with him, the picture Paul gives: “Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4). Baptists read the verse the same way and take it as a reason to baptize by immersion. The Westminster Confession holds instead that “Dipping of the person into the water is not necessary; but baptism is rightly administered by pouring, or sprinkling water upon the person.”

The two English words look at one event from two sides: baptize names what is done with the water, and christen names what the person becomes. A Catholic reference work of 1907 drew the same line, noting that the English word christen “signifies only the effect of baptism, that is, to make one a Christian, but not the manner and the act.”

Because babies were named as they were baptized, the English word christen took on a second meaning: by the middle of the 1400s it could mean “give a name to at baptism,” and from the 1530s it was used for naming anything at all. That sense is still alive. “If a ship is christened, it is officially given its name,” and in everyday speech people christen a new pair of boots by wearing them for the first time.

Why is a name given at a christening?

In older services the naming and the baptism happened in the same moment. The Church of England’s Book of Common Prayer of 1662 tells the priest to take the child and say to the godparents, “Name this Child.” He then baptizes the child by that name: “N. I baptize thee in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.” Its catechism asks a child, “Who gave you this Name?” and the child answers: “My Godfathers and Godmothers in my Baptism.” The English phrase Christian name, in use since the 1540s, means the name given at christening.

The Catholic rite still opens with the name. The priest’s first question to the parents is “What name have you given your child?” When he asks what they want from God’s Church for the child, they answer: “Baptism.” The Catechism explains: “In Baptism, the Lord’s name sanctifies man, and the Christian receives his name in the Church.” It can be a saint’s name, and canon law asks that “Parents, sponsors, and the pastor are to take care that a name foreign to Christian sensibility is not given.”

Should you say baptism or christening?

In English, both words are correct. Baptism is the name of the sacrament itself, and it covers a person of any age: an adult is baptized, and so is a baby. Christening is used of children, and often of the whole occasion: the service, the day and the family party afterwards, which is why people speak of a christening gown or a christening gift. The Methodist Church notes that “You may sometimes hear baptisms involving children referred to as christenings,” and that some people use the word for the service in which the sacrament is celebrated. So a guest is invited to a christening, and the child receives baptism there.

In church documents the word is nearly always baptism. The Catholic Catechism, the Orthodox Church’s teaching, and the Presbyterian and Baptist confessions all use it, and the Methodist Church says that “In Methodism, Baptism is the more common term.” The English word christening belongs mostly to everyday speech, and to the Church of England’s pages for families, which use the two words side by side.

Do Catholics say christening or baptism?

English-speaking Catholics use both words, and they mean the same thing. The Church’s own name for the sacrament is Baptism, and the Catechism and canon law use it throughout. In ordinary speech, as the 1907 Catholic Encyclopedia put it, “In English, the term christen is familiarly used for baptize.” A Catholic christening is a Catholic baptism.

The rite itself, in English, says baptize. In the Latin Church the priest pours water three times over the child’s head and says: “N., I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” The Catechism puts immersion first, as “the most expressive way,” and says pouring three times over the head has been allowed since ancient times. It asks for babies to be baptized soon after birth, because “the Church and the parents would deny a child the priceless grace of becoming a child of God were they not to confer Baptism shortly after birth.”

Is christening in the Bible?

The English word is not. The English words christen, christened and christening do not appear anywhere in the King James Version. Baptism runs through the whole New Testament, beginning with Jesus’ own baptism by John in the Jordan. After his resurrection Jesus sent his disciples out with the words: “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost” (Matthew 28:19). At Pentecost Peter told the crowd: “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost” (Acts 2:38).

No verse settles whether babies were among the first people baptized, and the churches read the same passages in two ways. Most of the argument turns on the households baptized in Acts, and on the words Peter spoke next at Pentecost: “For the promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call” (Acts 2:39).

Churches that baptize infants read these passages as including children. Lydia “was baptized, and her household” (Acts 16:15), and the jailer at Philippi “was baptized, he and all his, straightway” (Acts 16:33). The Orthodox Presbyterian Church argues that “God’s Word nowhere says that these households did not include children,” and, of Acts 2:39, that “The apostle Peter also assumed that the children of believers were included in the church.” The Catholic Catechism speaks more cautiously of the households: “it is quite possible that, from the beginning of the apostolic preaching, when whole ‘households’ received baptism, infants may also have been baptized.” It adds that there is “explicit testimony to this practice from the second century on.”

Churches that baptize only believers read the same passages as accounts of faith coming first. Before the jailer’s household was baptized, Paul and Silas “spake unto him the word of the Lord, and to all that were in his house,” and afterwards he rejoiced, “believing in God with all his house” (Acts 16:32, 34). A Southern Baptist seminary dean, writing on the Baptist Faith and Message in 2002, listed both households among the accounts in Acts where “believers were baptized following a response of faith to the gospel of Jesus Christ.” The Baptist Union of Great Britain reads Acts 2:39 as a promise to “all nations and people, not just Israel,” in which “the benefits of God’s salvation are offered to all, not least to children,” and it holds that “in the new covenant we do not become members of God’s people through birth but through new birth.”

Which churches christen babies?

Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, Lutheran, Methodist and Presbyterian churches baptize babies. Baptist churches wait until a person can profess faith, and Pentecostal churches such as the Assemblies of God also teach believers’ baptism by immersion: “All who repent and believe on Christ as Saviour and Lord are to be baptized.” All of them baptize with water.

Each church gives its reasons in its own documents. The Church of England’s Thirty-nine Articles of 1571 say: “The Baptism of young Children is in any wise to be retained in the Church, as most agreeable with the institution of Christ.” The same article uses the two words as one, calling baptism a mark “whereby Christian men are discerned from others that be not christened.” The Augsburg Confession of 1530, in the Lutheran Book of Concord, teaches that “children are to be baptized who, being offered to God through Baptism are received into God’s grace.” The Methodist Church baptizes babies and says it “has always done so – rooted in a belief that God is already reaching out to, and at work in, children long before they are able to respond to God personally.” The Westminster Confession, held by many Presbyterian churches, teaches: “Not only those that do actually profess faith in and obedience unto Christ, but also the infants of one, or both, believing parents, are to be baptized.”

The Orthodox Church keeps the three sacraments of entry together, for a baby as for an adult. “The sacrament of chrismation, also called confirmation, is always done in the Orthodox Church together with baptism,” and the newly baptized then receive Holy Communion: “This is the case with infants as well as adults.” In the Latin Catholic Church confirmation follows years later. The Methodist Church also confirms later, and calls confirmation “a public declaration of the promises you made – or were made on their behalf – at your baptism.”

The churches also differ over what baptism does: Catholics, Orthodox, Anglicans, Methodists and Presbyterians call it a sacrament, and Baptists call it an ordinance. Whether a person can be saved without it is a question with its own long answer.

Do Baptists get christened?

No. Baptist churches baptize believers, by immersion, and they do not baptize babies. The Second London Baptist Confession of 1689 says: “Those who do actually profess repentance towards God, faith in, and obedience to, our Lord Jesus Christ, are the only proper subjects of this ordinance.” It adds: “Immersion, or dipping of the person in water, is necessary to the due administration of this ordinance.” The Southern Baptist Convention’s Baptist Faith and Message puts it in one sentence: “Christian baptism is the immersion of a believer in water in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”

The Baptist Union of Great Britain gives the reason: “Baptist churches do not baptise infants because they believe that the decision to be a disciple of Jesus is one that can only properly be made at a later stage of spiritual development.” It reads the scene where parents brought children to Jesus (Mark 10:13–16) this way: “when the children were brought on this occasion Jesus did not baptise them but blessed them, and this was enough.”

Instead, many Baptist churches welcome a baby with a service of infant presentation or dedication, which the Baptist Union also calls “the blessing of children and the dedication of parents.” In the Baptist Union’s outline, the child is introduced by name, the parents promise to bring the child up in the Christian faith, the congregation stands to pledge its support, and the minister blesses the child. The Baptist Union is careful to add: “Infant presentation does not claim to make the child a Christian.” That faith, Baptists hope, will come later and be confessed in baptism. The service is compared with infant baptism in dedication vs baptism. Churches that baptize babies also offer a service of thanksgiving for a child. The Church of England’s Thanksgiving for the Gift of a Child can be held instead of a christening or as well as one. The Methodist Act of Thanksgiving after the Birth or Adoption of a Child serves several kinds of family, among them Christian parents who “want their child to be able to ask for Baptism, if and when they are ready to respond for themselves.”

What happens at a christening?

A Church of England christening usually takes place during the Sunday service, so the congregation can welcome the child, and the service itself is free. Its shape is simple:

1. Welcome. The vicar welcomes the family, a passage of the Bible is read, and the vicar explains what a christening means.
2. Promises. The parents and godparents make promises for the child. The vicar asks everyone present: “People of God will you welcome this child and uphold them in their new life in Christ?” They answer: “With the help of God, we will.”
3. The sign of the cross. The vicar marks the child’s forehead with a cross, in many churches with oil, saying: “Christ claims you as his own. Receive the sign of the cross.”
4. The water. “Water which is blessed in the church’s font will be poured over the child’s head by the vicar. This is the child’s baptism.”
5. Prayers and welcome. The church prays for the child and the family and welcomes the child into its life.
6. A candle. The child may be given a candle with the words “Shine as a light in the world to the glory of God.”

In a Catholic baptism, three signs follow the water. The child is anointed with chrism, the consecrated oil that marks the gift of the Holy Spirit. A white garment shows that the child has been clothed in Christ: “For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ” (Galatians 3:27). A candle lit from the Easter candle shows that Christ has given the child light. In the Orthodox Church, after the person “is immersed three times in the water in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit,” the newly baptized is dressed in a white robe, anointed with holy chrism and led three times around the font while the same verse from Galatians is chanted.

If you are a parent or godparent preparing for a baptism, Baptism and First Steps is a free course of six short lessons, one of which goes through the promises, the water and the signs that follow.

What do godparents do at a christening?

Godparents stand with the parents, make promises for the child and agree to help the child grow up in the faith. In the Church of England the first question put to them is: “Will you pray for them, draw them by your example into the community of faith and walk with them in the way of Christ?” They answer: “With the help of God we will.” They then answer for the child, turning away from what is against God and turning to Christ. The Catholic Catechism asks that godparents be “firm believers, able and ready to help the newly baptized.” For words to pray on the day, there are prayers for a baptism for the child, the parents and the godparents.

The rules for who can be a godparent differ by church:

A Catholic godparent must also lead “a life of faith in keeping with the function to be taken on,” and a baptized Christian of another church may stand beside the Catholic godparent “only as a witness of the baptism.” In the Orthodox Church, because the godparent speaks for the child, “the godparent himself must be a member of the Church.”

Being a godparent is a promise about faith. The Church of England says that “Godparents are not the people who will care for the child should anything happen to the parents,” and that “Arrangements for this would normally be made by a Will.”

Related reading

• Christening prayers for a baby girl
• Bible verses about baptism, and where Christians read them differently
• Why do Methodists sprinkle at baptism?
• Presbyterian vs Baptist: infant baptism compared
• Why was Jesus baptized?