Family Historian User Group

I may open a can of worms here, but in my experience in the Christian church, a baptism takes place when a person is old enough to know their own mind and partake in the event, whereas a christening takes place when a baby/very young child is introduced to the church by parents/guardians... Anyway, my question is whether I can change the fact type list displayed when you select the 'Add Fact' button to either display christening instead of baptism, or promote christening up the tree to where it would be displayed in that list, rather than having to then select 'more fact types', etc.?

The "Fast Add List" is completely under your control.

Go to Tools>Fact Types, Click on Christening and "Edit" and tick the "Show on Fast Add" option.

Super! Thanks for the quick response. I think my trouble is that I spend so much time entering data, and not enough on how the program actually works lol. Thanks again

SpencerDudeUK wrote: ↑

16 Nov 2019 13:00

I may open a can of worms here, but in my experience in the Christian church, a baptism takes place when a person is old enough to know their own mind and partake in the event, whereas a christening takes place when a baby/very young child is introduced to the church by parents/guardians ...

It is a can of worms!
To be honest, lots of people proclaim that baptisms and christenings are totally different but fail to say how one knows that one ceremony is a baptism and another is a christening. You are about the only person I remember who has actually defined a difference - as far as you are concerned - so respect for that!

Without wishing to stir up any pointless circling of definitionless arguments, I'd just add that the Book of Common Prayer, which defined the services for the Church of England for centuries, has three similar service called, from memory, something like the Order of Publick Baptism of Infants, the Order of Private Baptism of Infants, and the Order of Baptism of Those of Riper Years (and "Riper Years" is the rather delightful phrase!). Note that all three are Orders of Baptism and the CofE is clear on its web-site that the two things mean the same. To them.

Your terminology does at least match the concept of what Baptism is to the Baptist Church (no idea if they have a definition of christening but I'm fairly certain that they don't do what I'd recognise as a christening).

Interestingly, I have learnt fairly recently that many other languages have only one word for baptism / christening so can't understand us when we try to differentiate the two.

It's also clear that, despite what the CofE says today, some people in some parishes at some time, used the two words differently quite deliberately - we're just not sure what their difference was! While some people apparently used the two words just for a bit of variety.

So you should feel free to use the two terms how you like - the only thing is that it would be nice to record somewhere in your notes what the difference is - for you.

In addition there is the standard GEDCOM event Christening (adult) (tag CHRA) as well as the Christening (tag CHR) and the Baptism (tag BAPM) events.
So by inference Christening (CHR) only applies to children and not adults.

Interestingly, only the Birth (BIRT) and Christening (CHR) events support a subsidiary Family as Child (FAMC) link, which seems to lend some support to SpencerDudeUK's assertion.

The GEDCOM definitions say:
BAPM {BAPTISM}:=The event of baptism (not LDS), performed in infancy or later. (See also BAPL, above, and CHR)
CHR {CHRISTENING}:=The religious event (not LDS) of baptizing and/or naming a child.
CHRA {ADULT_CHRISTENING}:=The religious event (not LDS) of baptizing and/or naming an adult person.

AdrianBruce wrote: ↑

16 Nov 2019 13:24

Without wishing to stir up any pointless circling of definitionless arguments, I'd just add that the Book of Common Prayer, which defined the services for the Church of England for centuries, has three similar service called, from memory, something like the Order of Publick Baptism of Infants, the Order of Private Baptism of Infants, and the Order of Baptism of Those of Riper Years (and "Riper Years" is the rather delightful phrase!). Note that all three are Orders of Baptism and the CofE is clear on its web-site that the two things mean the same. To them.

Your terminology does at least match the concept of what Baptism is to the Baptist Church (no idea if they have a definition of christening but I'm fairly certain that they don't do what I'd recognise as a christening).

I was using Baptism to indicate a Baptist type adult ceremony, and Christening to indicate a CoE(++) type infant ceremony - after all I have a silver Christening Mug!

Then I found at record offices they had Baptismal Registers for CoE churches - so decided that there was no real difference and have changed all my Christenings to Baptisms (having checked with Adult Baptisms that I had entered an age - so I would not later be mislead into using the date as a proxy for birth).

Then I have found families which seem to do "batch baptisms" where parents seem to resist the church until they have a number of children and having been persuaded to have the latest baptised they do the lot! In these instances baptismal dates are not a reliable proxy for birth dates.

I now wonder whether, having read Mike's note about the GEDCOM standard whether my baptist type baptisms should actually be recorded as "Adult Christenings" - with any label amended to say "Baptism" to avoid justifiable offence to Baptists! (That just feels too messy).

In practice, I suspect most users stick to just one fact (either Baptism or Christening) and rely on the Age to determine how old the person was at the time.
This approach makes any analysis of such events easier to manage as there is only one fact to filter.

Have to say, I stick with Baptism for all as I am not even sure that FMP, LDS, etc actually differentiate Baptism / Christening correctly. In the Baptist Church (which encompasses a lot of my ancestors), Baptism takes place by full immersion and is a sign that that person (rather than the parents of a baby) has made the decision to "believe" - thus it is something that normally occurs (from my experience) in early / mid teens.

In essence, each religion will vary in terms of rules / naming.

I use baptism as they are all recorded in a baptism parish register regardless of age.

I stick with Baptism as well. The CoE maintains a register of Baptisms (which includes both infant and adult baptisms). The non-conformist registers I've dealt with either explicitly say they're recording a birth or an adult baptism (for those denominations that only practice adult baptisms, such as Baptists.)

I haven't yet found anything that records an event as a Christening, but if I did, I would use the Christening event.

ColeValleyGirl wrote: ↑

17 Nov 2019 18:25

... I haven't yet found anything that records an event as a Christening, but if I did, I would use the Christening event.

You haven't? Goodness me ....

I find numerous examples (well, every so often) where the word "christening" is dropped in every so often. I think I've seen "Christenings" at the top of the page and the verb being "Baptised" throughout the page. In none of the cases that I've found can I be certain that it was anything more than the clerk just having a change. That's why I use baptism throughout.

OK this is now bugging me, so I went to the CoE Website:

There is no difference between a christening service and a baptism service.

Some churches will use the word ‘baptism’ and some the word ‘christening’. The moment when your child has water poured or wiped on their head is the actual baptism and is at the heart of the service.

Babies are baptized during a christening service just as couples are ‘married’ during a ‘wedding’ service.

What is the religious equivalent of "Your Mileage May Vary?"

Thanks Davidf. That would explain why I was baptised at my christening My mum tied herself up in knots about it.