Reverend Robb McDonald remembers well the first time he felt the crushing pressure of creating a non-denominational baptism service that had to please an Italian-Catholic great-grandmother.
The family matriarch had flown in for the ceremony, ramping up the stress on McDonald.
Choosing McDonald, a non-denominational minister who provides services through Baptisms & Naming Ceremonies Canada, was an easy choice for the child’s parents, who no longer attend church but want to keep Great-Grandma happy. They opted for an intimate ceremony in their home but still wanted something special.
Canadians who have grown away from the church are finding they do not need to attend church to continue faith-based traditions. Just a quarter of the country regularly participates in group religion. Many families are looking for ways to customize religious rituals to fit their personalized approach to faith.
On the spur of the moment after the non-denominational baptism, McDonald suggested the elders in the family — parents, grandparents — take water from the basin and pour it on the baby’s head and bless the child themselves.
“That is different from what we would get in a traditional institution,” said McDonald. “The opportunity for everybody to use the water from the font. [They say] ‘I felt included in that ceremony, I’m a part of that child’s life.’”
The Italian great-grandmother was so pleased with the ceremony that after it, she had a special message for McDonald which a family member translated: “She wants you to go and see the pope to teach the pope how to do a baptism.”
Personalized experience
For many couples with a baby, the need to baptize and appoint a godparent is based on pleasing older family members.
“It is directed more to pleasing the grandparents or great-grandparents that may be involved, who are still holding those traditional values versus what the younger generation are believing today,” said McDonald.
Non-denominational baptisms are still based on traditional customs. McDonald’s baptisms are done with the Trinitarian process, where the child is baptized with flowing water three times in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Families are looking to personalize the experience, says McDonald, rather than adhere to a formal ritual in a church.
“My own experience with my nephews when they were baptized quite young, is that … there are multiple babies being baptized in that moment,” McDonald said. By contrast, his ceremonies “become a very personal, a very private and a very family-oriented situation and family celebration.”
He believes there is one God and religions each worship that one God in their own way. McDonald routinely performs multi-faith celebrations that include customs from many different religions. During a baptism for a joint Christian and Muslim family, he asked an aunt to give an Islamic blessing following the baptism.
He also supports having parents choose different terms to reflect the role of godparent for their children.
Families who take part in these ceremonies may appoint “guide-parents”, sponsors or mentors who commit to help and support the child throughout life.
The organization performs dozens of these ceremonies a year across Canada, except for Quebec where McDonald has faced difficulties convincing clergy to take part. Baptism and Naming Ceremonies Canada offers the services in five provinces, Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia, Alberta and British Columbia.
Guide-parents in lieu of godparents
In Quebec, church attendance has been falling precipitously for decades. In 1957, 88 per cent of Quebec Catholics reported they attend weekly religious services. That decreased to 38 per cent in 1980, and to seven per cent in 2018.
Octavie Bellavance, who grew up in Montreal, says in contrast to the English term “godparent,” the equivalent French terms “parrain” and “marraine” have no reference to god.
Many people in the province select a marraine and parrain without a baptismal ceremony. Instead, the parents or the child can casually identify a close family member or friend at any point in the child’s life to hold this role.
In English, Bellavance uses the term “guide-parents” in lieu of godparents after hearing it when living in the United Kingdom some years ago.
“Whenever I spoke English the word godparents always seemed a little bit inappropriate because my family is not religious,” says Bellavance.
“I heard the term guide-parent, and I thought, ‘oh, that’s neat.’ It’s a way to express the relationship that you would have but in a secular way, as an alternative to ‘godparent’, which doesn’t fit for a lot of families where people don’t believe in God anymore.”
“A majority culture ends up adopting religious principles fundamentally… making them seem as though they are neutral,” says Hillary Kaell, Associate Professor of Anthropology & School of Religious Studies at McGill University.
She says historically Quebec has been a Catholic majority culture. Even as society moves farther from institutionalized faith, society is personalizing the basic religious rituals — a trend that will only continue, she said.
“Rituals are creative in nature. They’re processes that change a lot, that rituals can be top down, but they can also be bottom up and that a ritual can even be personal in nature,” says Kaell.
“It’s to be expected — we’re social creatures. We want to find ways to express what’s meaningful to us.”
Reverend McDonald says a growing group of people with no church affiliation is looking to have religious ceremonies. He expects they will keep his colleagues and him – whom he calls “mobile ministers” – very busy.
“It’s a huge change that’s starting… I believe we’re only on the cusp of this.”
