Godparents

Our parish is currently in the happy season of receiving many new babies into the congregation. Whenever we have a wave of baptisms, one of the questions I get asked is about the practice of selecting godparents or sponsors. This is one of my favorite questions to be asked as a priest. As I have been thinking through the practice of Tradition in our parish life, I realized as well that this question is directly connected to our inheritance and bestowal of the Faith. As an appendix to that series, then, I’d like to reflect here on the concept of godparents and to offer the practical advice I give to new parents when they ask about it.

First, let’s start with a bit of history. The practice of infant baptism has been observed in every age of the Church–it has always been the consensus practice despite some objections among the radical reformers during the 16th Century. In baptisms for infants, children, and adults, it was common practice for the baptized to have a sponsor, someone who brings them to the congregation to be incorporated into it. It is important to note that even adult converts are to have sponsors–everyone enters the Church as a little child, even if they are an agéd child. For several centuries, the primary sponsors of babies and children were their natural parents, although this practice changed to allow and even require the sponsors not to be the natural parents. This extension of the family through relations in the Church even came to have legal status in some places. Theologically, the sponsor relationship tells a powerful story about the Church as the family of God, of which the natural family is a type. Further, the sponsor embodies the truth that we do not bring ourselves to the Faith, but are brought by the grace of God that goes before us to lead us both directly and through mediating relationships with those people who are already His. We do not initiate ourselves; our participation in the Faith is by grace and also received through traditioning relationships. By the time we arrive at Baptism, we have already been the benefactors of a constellation of loving relationships, past and present.

By the time of the Reformation, the Latin term sponsor was accompanied and sometimes replaced by the Germanic ‘godparent.’ Typically, there were two or three godparents selected for a child. In the Prayer Book tradition, parents are advised to choose three godparents, two of the same sex and one of the opposite sex as the child, although the most common situation involves the choosing of a godmother and a godfather. Natural parents are presumed to be the main presenters, and the two or three godparents stand with them and make the baptismal vows on behalf of the child during the Liturgy. They vow to 1) embody an active faith in Jesus Christ and 2) take an active role in the spiritual formation of the child and their incorporation into the congregation. In some contexts, godparents also promise to act in the place of parents should something happen to incapacitate them, although this is not a matter the Church enforces. Godparents are models of the Faith for children; they share the burden of the child’s formation, are accountable before God for their godchildren, and carry out a humble vocation of helping families on behalf of the Church.

There are at least two spiritual benefits to the practice of choosing godparents. First, it is an important discipline for natural parents to acknowledge from the outset that they need relationships beyond themselves to raise up their children in the most important things. This cuts against a bad habit in American views of parenthood. Regrettably, American parents are often cut off from social support when they have children. The image of the nuclear family ensconced in their domestic space as an atomistic unit of society remains a powerful image. Godparents retain an active presence in the lives of children and help parents from getting too far into the weeds of childrearing. Natural parents are called by this relationship into the spiritual disciplines of first, not imagining themselves to be doing it alone; second, having safe people in their lives to ask for help; and third, allowing their children to have meaningful relationships with Christian grownups other than themselves. When observed, these disciplines help parents to have a saner relationship with their children by acknowledging their need for interdependence with others. This dispels the awful social pressure to do it alone as a parent, but also subdues the unrealistic and vain internal desire to be all that our child needs, to be omnipresent and omni-competent for them. Godparents help parents avoid developing a god-complex.

The other spiritual benefit of the practice of godparents is for the godparents themselves. When children enter the congregation, the whole parish is accountable for them. We belong to one another as Christian brethren, no matter how big or small we are. Godparents assume vicariously the responsibility of the parish to be the family of God for a new member, to call them into sainthood and to assist their way. This requires of godparents that they are serious Christians worthy of emulating and who see the practice of the Faith as more than a private spiritual matter. Godparents, I would argue (as both a parent and godparent), are given grace to love their godchildren in a unique way and to see them from a perspective that even parents cannot always see. I suspect this is one of the reasons why so many folktales invest godparents with magical abilities–there is something very special about a person who vows themselves to love as their own a child who is not their own in the Name of Jesus. I suspect that our Lord does empower them with grace sufficient to the task.

Given these purposes for godparents, there are a couple of pieces of practical advice I give when asked about how to choose godparents, based on my theological reflections and my own meandering experience. First, it is best to pick godparents who try to be faithful grownups. The godparent role is not primarily a matter of identifying and honoring one’s best friends. Instead, parents should start by asking: “who among my trusted friends would I want my kids to imitate in their practice of the Faith?” Second, from among this list of people it is worth considering the weak-spots in one’s own Christian walk, parenting-style, and personality, and to identify who among the potential sponsors could provide what we might be lacking. This is as vulnerable an experience as it sounds. When I was choosing godparents for my kids, I asked this question: “who can show them ways of being faithful to Jesus that are beyond my reach?” Hopefully, we will all find many plausible candidates for godparents, and then it becomes a prudential matter of asking, based on who we are as parents, who might help to offer what we cannot. It is a way we affirm with St. Paul that the members of the Church are diversely gifted, that no one has all the spiritual gifts, and that all are meant to work to the mutual strengthening of one another.

Godparents are one expression of a Church that cares about the future and knows that life is about more than its immediate concerns. A parish culture of godparenting is a sign of health. Godparenting also drives home the fact that the Christian life is not an individual lifestyle nor is it restricted to household habits. We need others to raise us in the faith; in fact, we need many others to raise us well. Godparenting cuts against the unhealthy view of parents as omni-competent, which ends up driving them insane. It also cuts against clericalism in the sense that the congregation does not relegate formation only to one professional Christian in their midst. Godparenting and community-oriented formation restores a lively sense of incorporation in the fellowship of Christ’s Body. That some become godparents is a reminder to us all that we are all responsible for bestowing the Faith to those who come after us. Whether we are officially sponsors of a particular person or not, we are all called to being the kind of Christians through whom others can perceive Christ and after whom they can follow in seeking Him. And as those little ones increase as we decrease, if it is in and for the cause of conveying a life of prayer to the next generation, we will find that as they grow in Him we are not diminished but rather transformed. As we cease to live for ourselves–especially in spiritual things–we will find that we can actually become fully ourselves. May the Lord give us grace to embody a living Faith, and may we always live in such a way as to propel those who come after us further up and further into the knowledge and love of God.