OUT, IN, OUT: JESUS' BLESSING OF THE
CHILDREN AND INFANT BAPTISMDavid F. Wright
A common, and perhaps even a characteristic, feature of recent orders of
service for the baptizing of infants has been the absence of the pericope of
Jesus' blessing of young children in any of its three Synoptic versions—
Mk 10.13-16; Mt. 19.13-15; Lk. 18.15-17. None of the orders in the
Church of England's new Common Worship includes it, but it is cited, but
not read, in the service of 'Thanksgiving for the Gift of a Child': 'As Jesus
took children in his arms and blessed them, so now we ask God's blessing
on N'.^1 In the Anglicans' Alternative Service Book of 1980, now super-
seded by Common Worship, it was similarly missing from the infant
baptismal orders, but found a place within the same grouping of'Initiation
Services' in the 'Thanksgiving' both for a child's birth and for adoption. It
was also included in the services for the burial of a child. On every occur-
rence the Markan text is prescribed.^2 The Methodist Worship Book of 1999
not only leaves it out of 'The Baptism of Young Children', but in the
'Thanksgiving for the Birth or Adoption of a Child', placed among a
group of'Pastoral Services', provides Mk 9.36-37 instead.^3
By contrast The Methodist Service Book of 1975 required Mk 10.13-16
to be read in the baptism of infants, just as the same church's Book of
Offices had in 1936 drawn on the same passage among others in the
- Common Worship: Service and Prayers for the Church of England (London:
Church House Publishing, 2000), p. 341. - The Alternative Service Book 1980 (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1980), pp.
215, 220, 319, 330, 944, 948-49. For brief comments see R.C.D. Jasper and P.F.
Bradshaw, A Companion to the Alternative Service Book (London: SPCK, 1986), pp.
346, 349-50. - The Methodist Worship Book (Peterborough: Methodist Publishing House,
1999), p. 400.